How Much Are Van Gogh's Sunflowers Worth Today?

Christie's sold the canvas, now in Tokyo, in London on March 30, 1987, for £24 million, or $40 million; The New York Times reported the dollar price as $39.9 million ^[4][5]. The Art Newspaper notes that the sum was three times more than any artwork had ever fetched at auction, and the first time a modern picture, rather than an Old Master, held the record ^[5].

The buyer was the Yasuda insurance company, which hung it in a museum on the 42nd floor of its Tokyo headquarters ^[6]. Yasuda later became part of Sompo, and the painting is now the star attraction of the Sompo Museum of Art ^[5][6]. It's Van Gogh's own copy of the London original, and unlike its twin in Amsterdam, it's unsigned ^[5][6].

The record didn't last the year. That November, Irises sold for $53.9 million ^[4], and how much Irises is worth tells that story.

Adjusted for inflation, the 1987 price comes to about $120 million, by The Art Newspaper's reckoning, and its Van Gogh specialist, Martin Bailey, says that if the Tokyo canvas ever came onto the market again, “it would certainly go for several hundred million dollars” ^[5]. That's an expert's estimate, not a bid.

For context, the auction record for any Van Gogh is $117 million, paid for Orchard with Cypresses in 2022 ^[5]. The best still-life prices are $63 million for Parisian Novels in 2025 and $62 million for Poppies and Daisies in 2014 ^[5]. A Sunflowers would be measured against both, and against the fame of the series. The whole top ten is in our ranking of the most expensive Van Gogh paintings, and what a Van Gogh painting is worth covers the rest of the market.

Condition matters to any buyer, too; whether Van Gogh's Sunflowers are fading gathers the research on their yellows.

From a lawsuit. In December 2022 heirs of the German banker Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, who had owned the Tokyo canvas by 1910, argued that he was persecuted as a Jew and that it left his hands in a forced sale; they valued it at $250 million and asked for $750 million in punitive damages ^[6]. What he was paid remains unknown, though Edith Beatty, the London collector who bought it in 1935, insured it for £10,200 in 1937 ^[6].

The courts never ruled on that history. The federal court in Chicago dismissed the case, and on November 21, 2025, the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed, holding that the district court lacked personal jurisdiction over the Sompo companies ^[7]. So $250 million remains the claimants' figure, not a market price.

He put a price on them himself, in a letter to Theo in January 1889, and it was 500 francs ^[3]. More of what he wrote about painting flowers is in what Van Gogh said about flowers.

The first real sale fell short of that. In April 1891 the critic Octave Mirbeau bought Three Sunflowers, the first of the four still lifes of sunflowers Van Gogh painted in the Yellow House in Arles, and paid 300 francs for it ^[8]. By 1912, when he parted with it, its value had rocketed to 50,000 francs ^[8].

The family found them hard to let go. Jo van Gogh-Bonger, Theo's widow, and her son loved the two they still owned; when she finally sold one to the National Gallery in London in 1924, she wrote to its director, “It is a sacrifice for the sake of Vincent’s glory” ^[9].

The National Gallery counts seven, painted between 1888 and 1889, and five of them hang in museums ^[1]. One is in a private collection and hasn't been exhibited for generations, and one, bought by a Japanese collector in 1921, was destroyed in the Second World War ^[1].

Four of the seven were painted in August 1888, in just one week, with Van Gogh working fast before the flowers faded. ^[1] Three more replicas followed in January 1889. ^[1] The Munich picture, a bold canvas of twelve sunflowers on a turquoise ground, and the London picture are the two he signed. ^[1][11]

The Philadelphia Museum of Art describes its canvas as painted from memory in the winter of 1889, a variation on the Munich picture, “far from being a simple copy.” ^[11] The Amsterdam canvas stayed with Theo's family until 1962, when it was transferred to the Vincent van Gogh Foundation. ^[2] To tell all seven apart, see which Sunflowers is which.

The sixth, the version bought by a Japanese collector in 1921, was destroyed in the Second World War. It is recorded here as the destroyed Sunflowers. ^[1] The seventh is Three Sunflowers, above. ^[1][8]

Yes. A hand-painted copy is a new oil painting on canvas, made brushstroke by brushstroke from the original, so it has real paint texture instead of a printed surface. It is priced by size, and a copy is not a museum original.

The card below opens the page for the Munich version, where every size is listed. Other flower paintings are gathered under Van Gogh’s botanicals.