How Much Is a Van Gogh Painting Worth? Real Prices Explained

Less often than you might think, and for very different sums. In a typical year fewer than a handful of his paintings are publicly auctioned, and the odd one is sold privately, usually very discreetly ^[1]. In 2021, for example, only six of his oils went to auction worldwide, at prices from $7 million to $71 million ^[3].

So every range below rests on a small number of sales. The table groups documented results by type of work. Treat each band as evidence, not as a quote for any particular picture.

The top tier, by far. Nine of the ten most expensive paintings come from what The Art Newspaper calls his “more valued years” in Provence and Auvers-sur-Oise, that is, Arles, Saint-Rémy and Auvers ^[1]. All ten sold for more than $50 million, and our ranking of the most expensive Van Gogh paintings lists them ^[1].

The record is Orchard with Cypresses, a spring landscape painted a few weeks after he reached Arles. It sold for $117,180,000 including fees at Christie's in New York on November 9, 2022; the hammer price was $102 million, and three bidders, all on the phone, fought for it ^[3]. Below it come Labourer in a Field, $81 million in 2017, and Wooden Cabins among the Olive Trees and Cypresses, $71 million in 2021 ^[1].

Portraits do well too. His self-portraits are highly prized, and only three remain in private hands, including Self-portrait without a Beard, sold for $72 million in 1998 ^[1]. And a landscape can climb fast: the Alyscamps avenue sold for $12 million in 2003 and $66 million in 2015 ^[1].

In real terms, though, the $83 million paid in 1990 for Portrait of Dr Paul Gachet equals about $210 million today, so it remains the most expensive Van Gogh once inflation is counted ^[1]. Two versions exist: the one sold in 1990 and the one given to the doctor himself, now in Paris ^[9].

Less than the Provence canvases. Paris pays less: the record for a painting from those years is $62.7 million, set by Parisian Novels in 2025, almost double the previous high of $33.2 million ^[2]. That also made it the record for a Van Gogh still life, though two earlier sales, Poppies and Daisies at $61.8 million in 2014 and Sunflowers in 1987, were higher in real terms ^[2].

Flower pieces such as Poppies and Daisies hold the other top still-life prices ^[2]. Smaller Paris pictures sell in the tens of millions: Moored Boats, painted in summer 1887, made the equivalent of about $32 million in 2024 ^[1]. Landscape under Stormy Sky, painted in Arles in April 1889, made $54 million in 2015 ^[1].

Far less. The pictures from Nuenen sell in single-digit millions. A landscape of pollarded birches painted in 1884 made $7,344,500 in 2021, and a peasant woman holding a child, painted in 1885, made $4,470,000 in 2020 ^[4][5].

Reporting a $698,500 drawing from The Hague, Martin Bailey noted that these earlier works “do not fetch the prices of his later works done in France” ^[2].

Oil beats paper: the highest prices are all for oil paintings ^[1]. Still, the watercolor Wheatstacks, made in Arles in June 1888, sold for $35,855,000 in 2021 ^[1][6]. For drawings, the record is $11.2 million, paid in 2025 for Sower in a Wheatfield with Setting Sun, which passed La Mousmé at $10.4 million in 2021 ^[2]. A drawing from his Hague years, Fisherman with Basket on his Back, went for $698,500 ^[2].

Almost nothing. The Red Vineyard, famed as the only painting he is certain to have sold, was bought for 400 francs by the Belgian painter Anna Boch when it was shown in Brussels in early 1890 ^[7]. It's recorded here as Red Vineyards at Arles, and how many paintings Van Gogh sold covers the other, less documented sales.

Prices climbed slowly after his death. The eleven paintings sold in 1891 went for roughly 400 francs each, and his commercial success only began in 1895, when the Paris dealer Ambroise Vollard started a series of exhibitions ^[7]. Then, in 1905, Theo's widow, Jo van Gogh-Bonger, staged a retrospective of more than 480 works at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and after it the prices of his work rose rapidly ^[8].

The ones you probably know best. What The Starry Night is worth explains why MoMA's painting is so hard to price. Irises sold for $54 million in 1987 and has been in the J. Paul Getty Museum since 1990, at a price never disclosed ^[1]; see what Irises is worth. The Sunflowers sold in 1987 is now the star of the Sompo Museum of Art, and Bailey expects it would “certainly go for several hundred million dollars” if it came up again ^[1]. What the Sunflowers are worth tells that story.

Rarity comes first. His paintings only occasionally come onto the market, and the late canvases from Provence and Auvers-sur-Oise are the most valued ^[1]. When he painted a picture matters a lot, as the sections above show.

Subject moves the price too. A famous sitter helps: Dr Gachet cared for Van Gogh after he shot himself, which in Bailey's view adds greatly to the interest of his portrait ^[1]. And history adds value. Orchard with Cypresses was auctioned for $15,000 in 1935 and came to Christie's from the collection of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen; its price has multiplied nearly 8,000 times since ^[3].

If you want the picture rather than the provenance, there is another route. A hand-painted copy is not a print: a painter recreates the work in oil on canvas, following its composition, colors and brushwork, so you get real paint texture on your wall. It is priced by size, and each painting in our catalog of Van Gogh's works has its own page listing the sizes.