Van Gogh's Long-Hidden Chestnut Trees Could Smash His Auction Record at Sotheby's
On 2 October 2026, The Art Newspaper told the full story behind the Van Gogh that could become the most expensive the artist has ever sold at auction. Châtaigniers en fleurs (Blossoming Chestnut Trees), painted in Auvers-sur-Oise in May 1890 and not exhibited in public since 1964, leads the 12-work Blaquier-Arrieta Collection that Sotheby’s unveiled on 30 September and will sell in New York on 18 November, with an estimate in the region of $180 million.
What: Legendary: The Blaquier-Arrieta Collection, a single-owner evening auction of 12 Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings estimated at about $450 million
Where: Sotheby’s, Breuer Building, 945 Madison Avenue, New York
When: Announced 30 September 2026; auction 18 November 2026, 6pm EST
Who: Heirs of Nelly Arrieta de Blaquier and Carlos Pedro Blaquier; works by Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet
Section: Auctions & Market
What happened
Sotheby’s announced the sale on 30 September, unveiling four of the paintings in London. The house has guaranteed the consignors an undisclosed sum, so the Van Gogh will sell whatever happens in the room. The Art Newspaper notes that a $180 million hammer price would come to about $207 million with fees, far above the current Van Gogh auction record of about $117 million, set by Orchard with Cypresses (1888) from Paul Allen’s collection at Christie’s New York in 2022. According to the paper’s Van Gogh specialist Martin Bailey, it is one of only eight of the artist’s 50 Auvers landscapes still in private hands.
It is not the only potential record in the sale. Artnet News and ARTnews report that Cézanne’s Arlequin (1888–90), a portrait of the artist’s son Paul in harlequin costume, carries an estimate of around $120 million, close to his record of $137.8 million. The group also includes Pissarro’s 1898 view of the Place du Théâtre-Français ($30 million–$40 million), Renoir’s En Canot (Jeune fille à la barque) of 1877 ($25 million–$35 million), Degas’s racing pastel Avant la course ($20 million–$30 million) and Monet’s Le Jardin des Tuileries of 1876 ($15 million–$20 million). “It’s the collection of the year,” Simon Shaw, senior advisor at Sotheby’s, told Artnet News.
Before the sale, The Art Newspaper says, the Van Gogh will be shown in Taipei (5–6 October), Hong Kong (13–15 October) and New York (7–17 November), two Asian stops that reflect the growing weight of Asian buyers in the Van Gogh market.
Why it matters
Van Gogh arrived in Auvers in May 1890, days after leaving the asylum at Saint-Rémy, and on 25 May he wrote to his brother Theo that he had just finished “a study of chestnut trees”, as The Art Newspaper recounts. The picture shows the chestnuts of the Avenue de la Gare in full blossom under a deep blue sky, with three women carrying Japanese-style parasols beneath them. Bailey identifies the far building as a bar a two-minute walk from Van Gogh’s inn; it is still a bar-tabac today, Le Balto, at 19 Rue du Général de Gaulle. He reads the painting as a picture of regained freedom, made two months before the artist’s death on 29 July 1890.
Its history is just as eventful. After Theo’s death it passed to his widow, Jo van Gogh-Bonger, who sold it in 1905. It later belonged to the Berlin publisher Samuel Fischer, whose Jewish family was persecuted under the Nazis; a Sotheby’s spokesperson told The Art Newspaper that recent research satisfied the house that the family was free at all times to dispose of the work. It then went to Paris collectors, to the Hollywood songwriter and producer Buddy DeSylva in 1945, then to a New York collector, and finally, in 1975, to the Blaquiers, who made their fortune in Argentine sugar. The Art Newspaper also recalls, citing the BBC, that Carlos Pedro Blaquier was indicted in 2012 over detentions of activists during Argentina’s military dictatorship; he denied wrongdoing and died before trial. A 2023 Argentine customs fine over the export of the paintings to Luxembourg was waived in July 2026, clearing the way for the sale.
The family has sold before: Christie’s privately placed their Van Gogh Seated Zouave (1888) in November 2025 for a reported $190 million. If Blossoming Chestnut Trees meets its estimate, the auction record set four years ago will fall by a wide margin.
The painting behind the story
Blossoming Chestnut Trees is not in the Sapiens Verbum print shop, but a painting from the same weeks is. Van Gogh’s Green Wheat Fields, Auvers (1890), now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, has the same short, restless brushstrokes and the same spring light. Its history mirrors the chestnut trees, too: Paul Mellon bought it in 1955 and, apart from one exhibition at the Gallery in 1966, it stayed in his Virginia home until Mrs. Mellon gave it to the museum in 2013. One private Auvers landscape went to a museum. Another is about to go to the highest bidder.
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Read our essay Green Wheat Fields, Auvers by Van Gogh: A Landscape With Nothing But Wind, and for another major sale this week, see how Cézanne’s blue plate held its estimate in Hong Kong.
See Van Gogh’s Green Wheat Fields, Auvers framed on your wall: a museum-quality print, canvas or poster from the Sapiens Verbum print shop.
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💬 Over to you: Should a Van Gogh unseen in public for more than 60 years end up in a museum, or is a record-breaking auction the best way to bring it back into view? Tell us in the comments.
Sources
The Art Newspaper, 2 October 2026
Artnet News, 30 September 2026
ARTnews, 30 September 2026
Sotheby’s, Legendary: The Blaquier-Arrieta Collection
National Gallery of Art, “Green Wheat Fields, Auvers”
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