Sotheby's to auction $450 million Blaquier art collection featuring Van Gogh and Cezanne

The Blaquier collection goes to auction

Sotheby's announced that a collection of 12 Impressionist and post-Impressionist paintings will go to auction in New York on 18 November 2026. The ensemble, which has remained largely unseen in public for five decades, carries an estimated combined value of approximately $450 million. The artworks were acquired in London during the 1970s by Argentine collector Nelly Arrieta de Blaquier and her husband, sugar magnate Carlos Pedro Blaquier, and are being sold by their children. Five of the canvases went on display at Sotheby's in London on 30 September 2026 for a two-day viewing before traveling to Taipei and other international galleries.

“In my 30-plus years at Sotheby's, I've never had the privilege of handling a collection of quite this content and caliber.”

Van Gogh's late landscape

The most valuable lot in the offering is Vincent van Gogh's 1890 oil landscape "Chataigniers en fleurs" (Chestnut Trees in Flower), estimated at about $180 million. Van Gogh completed the canvas in May 1890 in Auvers-sur-Oise, shortly after his release from the psychiatric asylum in Saint-Remy-de-Provence and two months before his death at age 37. The painting is one of four works by Van Gogh centered on flowering chestnut trees and stands among eight Auvers paintings still in private hands. Following Van Gogh's death, the canvas passed to his brother Theo and later hung for 25 years in the Berlin-Grunewald villa of German publisher Samuel Fischer before joining the collection of American producer Buddy DeSylva.

Cezanne portrait and market valuation

Alongside the Van Gogh landscape, Paul Cezanne's "Arlequin" will go to sale with pre-sale estimates placed between $120 million and $150 million. Painted between 1888 and 1890, the canvas depicts the artist's son in Harlequin dress and represents the only piece from Cezanne's four-part Harlequin series remaining in private possession, with the other three housed in museums. Cezanne's previous benchmark was set in 2011 when "Les Joueurs de cartes" was acquired for $250 million for Qatar's national collection. Former Sotheby's auctioneer Philip Hook observed that the Blaquier collection acquired mythic standing because the owners did not loan works for public exhibitions.

“They came out with a collection that, rather cleverly, is focused on getting one representative work by each of the major names, and that is incredibly difficult to do.”

Works across Impressionism

The 12-lot catalog features additional canvases by Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, and Paul Gauguin. Specific pieces include Monet's "Le Jardin des Tuileries", Parisian street views by Pissarro, a Degas horse-racing scene, and a Renoir boating composition. The offering also contains paintings by Alfred Sisley, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Andre Derain, and Maurice de Vlaminck. Global preview exhibitions will continue through the autumn before the auction takes place in New York on 18 November 2026.