One of the most significant Van Gogh landscapes still in private hands is about to go on public display in New York — and anyone can see it before it disappears, likely into a museum vault or a very rich collector's living room.
On 18 November, Sotheby's will sell twelve Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings from the Argentine Blaquier-Arrieta collection, with a combined estimate of around US$450 million. The star is 'Châtaigniers en fleurs roses et blanches', painted by Van Gogh in Auvers-sur-Oise on 24 May 1890, weeks after he left the Saint-Rémy asylum and just two months before his death. It carries a US$180 million estimate and could top US$200 million, which would smash the artist's current record of US$117 million, set by 'Orchard with Cypresses' at Christie's in 2022. The canvas — a flowering chestnut tree in slashing greens, blues and yellows, with a small figure beneath — hasn't been exhibited publicly since 1964, when it hung at the Guggenheim.
The chestnut scene is one of only eight of Van Gogh's roughly 50 Auvers landscapes still outside the museum system, which is why the art world is buzzing. Its ownership history reads like a novel: it belonged in the 1940s to George 'Buddy' Gard de Sylva, the Hollywood songwriter who co-founded Capitol Records, before the Blaquier family bought it in 1975.
The rest of the sale is nearly as enticing. Cézanne's 'Arlequin', showing his son Paul in Harlequin costume and estimated at US$120 million, is the only one of four related versions not held by a museum, and could set a Cézanne record too. Monet's 'Le Jardin des Tuileries' (US$15–20 million), Pissarro's Parisian boulevard scene (US$30–40 million) and Renoir's 'En Canot' (US$25–35 million) round out a line-up that also includes Degas, Gauguin, Sisley, Toulouse-Lautrec and Derain.
The collection, assembled by Nelly Arrieta de Blaquier and Carlos Pedro Blaquier from the 1960s and kept largely hidden at their estate outside Buenos Aires, is touring before the sale: London and Taipei in early October, Hong Kong mid-October, Paris 19–23 October. The New York exhibition runs 7–17 November at Sotheby's — one day before the hammer falls.
For travellers, this is a rare free cultural stop in Manhattan. Even if you can't bid, catching a painting unseen for six decades — in its final public appearance — is the kind of art moment that doesn't come around twice. Pair it with the Met's Van Gogh holdings and a walk through Central Park in peak autumn colour, and you've got a weekend any art lover would envy.
