The 10 Most Expensive Van Gogh Paintings Ever Sold

This list counts public auction results, the prices that are fully on the record. It follows the ranking kept by The Art Newspaper's Van Gogh specialist, Martin Bailey, and adds the auction house's own figure or a report from the time wherever one exists ^[1].

Two things to keep in mind. These are nominal dollars, so older sales look smaller than they were: Bailey calculates that the 1990 Gachet price equals about $210 million today ^[1]. And some paintings change hands privately at similar prices, so they never appear on a list like this one ^[1].

The record holder is a spring orchard in blossom, screened by cypresses, painted in Arles in April 1888 and measuring 65.2 by 80.2 centimeters ^[2]. It's one of the blossom paintings Van Gogh made soon after he arrived in Arles, and it came to Christie's from the collection of the late Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft ^[1].

Its history is easy to follow. Theo acquired it from the artist on May 7, 1888; it was auctioned in New York in 1935; Charles Shipman and Joan Whitney Payson owned it by 1938; and Allen bought it from the family in 1998 ^[2]. Christie's places it in a series of fourteen orchards in blossom, his first major body of work in the south, and its price broke a Van Gogh record that had stood for more than thirty years ^[1][2].

Van Gogh thought of it as one half of a pair. Its partner, Orchard Bordered by Cypresses, belongs to the Kröller-Müller Museum in the Netherlands; it was painted from a similar spot and continues the view to the right ^[2][11].

When it sold at Christie's in 1990, Portrait of Dr Paul Gachet fetched $82.5 million, then the highest price for any painting at auction ^[7]. It's the first of two portraits Van Gogh painted of the doctor in Auvers a few weeks before his death; the second was given to Gachet and is now in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris ^[7]. In today's money the 1990 price is about $210 million, which keeps it the most expensive Van Gogh in real terms ^[1].

Its story is a strange one. The Städel Museum in Frankfurt received it in 1911, the Nazis confiscated it as “degenerate” in December 1937, and the banker Siegfried Kramarsky acquired it soon afterwards; his heirs sold it in 1990 ^[7]. The buyer, the Japanese businessman Ryoei Saito, once said he wanted it burnt with his body. Fortunately that didn't happen when he died in 1996, and two years later it was sold privately to the Austrian investment manager Wolfgang Flöttl ^[7]. It hasn't been seen in public since, and Bailey reports that it now belongs to an extremely secretive European billionaire ^[1][7].

Labourer in a Field sold at Christie's in New York on November 13, 2017, for $81,312,500, from the collection of Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass ^[3]. Painted in Saint-Rémy in early September 1889, it was inspired by the view from his bedroom at the asylum: a ploughman at work beneath one of his powerful suns ^[1][3].

Van Gogh sent it to Theo on December 6, 1889, as a gift for their sister Willemina ^[3]. Like most Van Goghs that come to market, it went to an anonymous buyer ^[1].

Self-portrait without a Beard sold at Christie's in New York on November 19, 1998, for $72 million, about $150 million in today's money ^[1]. He painted it at the asylum in September 1889 as a gift for his mother's seventieth birthday, which makes it unusually personal ^[1]. His self-portraits are highly prized and only two others remain in private hands; this one is believed to be in a very private European collection ^[1].

Wooden Cabins among the Olive Trees and Cypresses sold for $71,350,000 at Christie's in New York on November 11, 2021, in the sale of the Cox collection ^[1][4]. Painted at Saint-Rémy in October 1889, it measures 45.5 by 60.3 centimeters ^[4]. Bailey calls it a striking and little-known landscape, done in the countryside outside the asylum; it went to the London advisor Hugo Nathan of Beaumont Nathan for an unnamed client ^[1].

The Avenue of Les Alyscamps sold at Sotheby's in New York on May 5, 2015, for $66 million ^[1]. Van Gogh painted it in Arles in November 1888, a few days after Paul Gauguin arrived, and Gauguin painted the same scene close by ^[1]. For more on the two painters in Arles, see Gauguin's portrait of Van Gogh.

It's a tall canvas, 91.7 by 73.5 centimeters, and the Sotheby's catalog lists Marie and Joseph Ginoux of Arles as its first owners ^[12]. It also shows how fast prices have climbed. The same canvas sold at Christie's for $12 million in 2003, and twelve years later an anonymous buyer paid more than five times as much ^[1].

Parisian Novels, catalogued by Sotheby's as Piles de romans parisiens et roses dans un verre, sold on November 20, 2025, for $62,710,000, a record for a Van Gogh still life ^[5]. Painted in late 1887, in his final months in Paris, it's one of nine still lifes of books and one of only two in private ownership ^[5].

It came from the collection of the Chicago collectors Cindy and Jay Pritzker, and it's the only painting in this top ten from the Paris years ^[1].

Poppies and Daisies, a still life of a vase of daisies and poppies ^[8], sold at Sotheby's in New York on November 4, 2014, for $62 million ^[1]. Van Gogh completed it in Auvers-sur-Oise in June 1890, a few weeks before his death, and Sotheby's had estimated it at $30 million to $50 million ^[1][8].

Dr Gachet was probably its first owner ^[8]. The 2014 buyer was the entertainment company owner Wang Zhongjun, an amateur painter of flower still lifes, who said the final sum was “slightly lower than I expected” ^[1]. Bailey reads the purchase as a sign of the market's shift from North America and Europe toward East Asia ^[1].

Irises sold at Sotheby's in New York on November 11, 1987, for $53.9 million, then the highest price ever paid for an artwork at auction ^[6]. Before the sale it went on a month-long, 17,500-mile tour of Tokyo, London, Geneva and Zurich, and on the night about 2,200 people watched the hammer fall at $49 million ^[6].

The buyer, the Australian businessman Alan Bond, couldn't pay, so ownership stayed with the auction house, which sold it privately to the J. Paul Getty Museum in 1990 for an undisclosed sum ^[1]. The full story is in what Irises is worth.

Landscape under Stormy Sky sold at Sotheby's in New York on November 5, 2015, for $54 million ^[1]. Van Gogh painted it in Arles in April 1889, after he had mutilated his ear and a few weeks before he left for the asylum: a meadow of spring flowers with a strolling couple, under a dramatic sky ^[1].

The Art Newspaper rounds both this sale and Irises to $54 million and puts Irises ninth ^[1]; the exact 1987 figure for Irises, $53.9 million, comes from the report at the time ^[6]. In practice the two share the bottom of the list.

One famous Van Gogh sale isn't in the top ten. A Sunflowers, his own copy of the London original and one of his several Sunflowers, sold at Christie's in London on March 30, 1987, for £24 million ($40 million), three times more than any artwork had ever fetched at auction; it went to the Yasuda insurance company and is now the star of the Sompo Museum of Art ^[1]. Bailey judges that it would certainly go for several hundred million dollars if it were sold again ^[1], and what the Sunflowers are worth tells that story.

Some major Van Goghs have also changed hands privately for similar sums, such as Portrait of Joseph Roulin, acquired by New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1989, and Girl against a Background of Wheat, bought by the casino owner Steve Wynn in 1999 ^[1]. Those deals are usually very discreet, so they can't be ranked ^[1]. Neither can the museum icons: what The Starry Night is worth explains why. The ten above are all oils; the top watercolor, Wheatstacks, made $36 million in 2021, and the top drawing, Sower in a Wheatfield with Setting Sun, $11 million in 2025 ^[1]. What a Van Gogh painting is worth covers the rest of the market.

Three patterns stand out. Period matters: nine of the ten come from his last years in Provence and Auvers-sur-Oise, like the asylum view in Labourer in a Field ^[1]. Supply is thin: in a typical year fewer than a handful of his pictures are auctioned ^[1]. And the buyers have moved: all ten records were set in New York, yet Bailey now estimates that half of all Van Gogh paintings sold end up with Asian collectors ^[1].

Seven of the ten sales happened in 2014 or later, and Parisian Novels joined the list only in November 2025 ^[1][5]. One great picture coming to auction could reshuffle the top again. For the paintings everyone knows, see famous Van Gogh paintings and where to see them.

Like most Van Goghs that come to market, most of these ten went to private buyers, several of them anonymous ^[1]. A hand-painted copy is a different thing from a print: a painter recreates the picture in oil on canvas, by hand, following its composition, colors and brushwork, so you get real paint texture on your wall. You can see the sizes for a hand-painted copy of Irises, the 1987 record breaker, on its page.