The 10 Most Expensive Van Gogh Paintings Ever Sold

Van Gogh's most expensive painting is Orchard with Cypresses, a modest spring landscape he painted in Arles in April 1888. It sold at Christie's New York on November 9, 2022, for $117,180,000, the star lot of Paul Allen's collection, and it broke a record that had stood since 1990. That's the auction answer. Adjust for inflation and the crown goes to a different picture, and either way the list below has almost none of the canvases people see in their heads when they hear his name.

That's the odd thing about the top ten. The pictures on posters and mugs belong to museums, and museums don't sell. So a ranking by price looks nothing like a list of the Van Gogh paintings people hang at home. What reaches the saleroom is whatever stayed in private hands: orchards, a ploughman, a pile of novels, a meadow under clouds. Fewer than a handful of his paintings come up for public sale in a typical year, which is why each one turns into a fight.

Ten prices, ranked

All ten sold in New York. Prices include the buyer's premium and are the figures of the day, not adjusted for inflation.

1. Orchard with Cypresses, $117.2 million (2022)

He painted it in April 1888, during the spring he spent working through the blossoming orchards around Arles one after another. It's a small, happy picture: white and pink trees fenced in by a dark windbreak of cypresses. That spring he worked out what color could do, and you can feel it.

Its history explains why it was so fresh to the market. It reached America in 1928 and sold at auction for just $15,000 in 1935. By 1938 it belonged to the heiress Joan Whitney Payson (keep that name in mind for number ten), and Paul Allen bought it privately from her heirs in 1998. When his collection came up four years after his death, the hammer fell at $102 million. With fees the total was $117,180,000, and all of it went to the causes Allen had chosen. The night Allen's pictures were sold was the first time a Van Gogh cleared $100 million at auction.

2. Portrait of Dr Gachet, $82.5 million (1990)

For 32 years this was the number. On May 15, 1990, the Tokyo businessman Ryoei Saito paid $82.5 million for the portrait of the doctor who watched over him in Auvers-sur-Oise during his last weeks. Nobody had paid more for any painting at auction. Adjusted for inflation that's something like $210 million, which still makes it the most expensive Van Gogh in real terms, by a wide margin.

Van Gogh painted it in June 1890. Writing to his sister Willemien on 13 June, he described the melancholy he gave Gachet's face and admitted it might look like a grimace to people looking at the canvas. What he was after, he told her, was "sad but gentle but clear and intelligent." A second version went to Gachet himself and is now in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.

The one Saito bought has barely been seen since. He joked that he wanted it burnt with his body; he died in 1996 and it wasn't. It went privately to the Austrian investment manager Wolfgang Flöttl in 1998, then on to an owner who kept very quiet, and where the portrait hangs today is still a guessing game.

3. Labourer in a Field, $81.3 million (2017)

This one came within $1.2 million of Gachet. He painted it in September 1889 at the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, from the view out of his window: a ploughman working the field under a powerful sun. It was his first canvas after a seizure six weeks earlier had stopped him painting, and there's nothing timid about it.

Christie's sold it to an anonymous buyer in November 2017 for $81.3 million, and for five years it sat second only to the doctor.

4. Self-Portrait without Beard, $71.5 million (1998)

Painted in September 1889 as a present for his mother's 70th birthday, and probably the last self-portrait he made. He shaved for it, to look younger and healthier for her. It didn't entirely work: the face is heavily lined and the eyes are very sad.

It came up at Christie's on November 19, 1998, from the estate of Jacques Koerfer, a former head of BMW, with an estimate of $20–25 million. It made $71,502,500, nearly three times the high figure, and the next morning's papers ranked it the third most expensive painting ever sold at auction. Only two other Van Gogh self-portraits remain in private hands, so don't count on a rematch.

5. Wooden Cabins among the Olive Trees and Cypresses, $71.3 million (2021)

The least known picture here, and one of the biggest surprises. He painted it in October 1889 in the foothills of Les Alpilles, outside the asylum at Saint-Rémy: a farmer's plain wooden huts in an olive grove, sheltered by a windbreak of cypresses, with the limestone hills turned purple behind. It came about a month after he'd recovered from a bad crisis that summer, and the olive trees were a problem he kept returning to that autumn, the same silver-green he chased in the grove under a yellow sky and sun.

The Dallas oilman Edwin Cox bought it in 1982 and barely lent it. Since the 1920s it had been shown in public only twice, in London in 1949 and in Mons in 1980. Christie's hoped for around $40 million when his collection sold in November 2021. Hugo Nathan of the London advisers Beaumont Nathan bought it for a client at $71.3 million.

6. The Avenue of Les Alyscamps, $66.3 million (2015)

The Alyscamps was the great Roman burial ground of Arles, later a Christian cemetery, and by the 19th century a romantic walk lined with poplars and stone tombs. Van Gogh painted this version on November 1, 1888, days after Paul Gauguin arrived for their two months of working together, and the two of them set up their easels in the avenue. He called it a study of the whole avenue, entirely yellow.

Its price history is the best argument for patience. It sold at Christie's in 2003 for about $12 million. At Sotheby's in May 2015 it went for $66.3 million, more than five times as much, to a bidder in jeans and a hooded jacket who spoke Chinese. The catalogue for that May sale traces it back to Marie and Joseph Ginoux in Arles and then to the dealer Ambroise Vollard.

7. Parisian Novels, $62.7 million (2025)

The newest entry and the only Paris picture on the list. He painted it in late 1887, probably in Theo's apartment on the Rue Lepic: 22 yellow-covered novels scattered across a table, with three pink roses in a glass. It went into the Indépendants exhibition in March 1888, its first time in public.

After his death it belonged to the Italian painter Antonio Mancini, then a Swiss collection. It sold at Christie's in 1988 for around £7 million and passed through Robert Holmes à Court before Cindy and Jay Pritzker bought it in 1994. When Cindy Pritzker died in March 2025, at 101, her estate sent it to Sotheby's. The estimate was $40 million. On November 20, 2025, it made $62.7 million, with the winning bids handled by Patti Wong, a former head of Sotheby's Asia. It set a new high for his Paris years, nearly doubling the $33.2 million paid in 2024 for Corner of a Garden with Butterflies.

8. Vase with Daisies and Poppies, $61.8 million (2014)

Painted in June 1890 at Dr Gachet's home in Auvers, a month after he left the asylum and only weeks before he died at the end of July.

Sotheby's New York sold it in November 2014 to Wang Zhongjun, chairman of the Beijing film company Huayi Brothers, for $61.8 million against an estimate of $30–50 million. It set a record for a Van Gogh still life (Parisian Novels took that title in 2025) and a record for Western art bought by a Chinese collector. Wang, an amateur painter himself, still thought the final sum came in "slightly lower than I expected."

9. Landscape under a Stormy Sky, $54 million (2015)

April 1889, Arles. He had recently cut off part of his ear and spent time in hospital, and within weeks he would enter the asylum at Saint-Rémy. What he painted in between was a meadow full of spring flowers under rolling clouds, with a couple out for a walk. It's 60.5 × 73.7 cm and was done in a single session. He sent it to Theo that July, and it came two months before the night sky he painted from the asylum.

At Sotheby's on November 5, 2015, it carried an estimate of $50–70 million, the highest of the evening, and sold for $54,010,000. The lot's ownership history runs from Theo and his widow Jo through Hungary, the Netherlands and Canada to a London gallery by 1938.

10. Irises, $53.9 million (1987)

Painted in May 1889, probably the first picture he made at the asylum. In November 1987 it became, briefly, the most expensive painting ever sold.

Here's the part I like. The seller was John Whitney Payson, who had inherited it from his mother, Joan Whitney Payson, the same heiress who owned Orchard with Cypresses by 1938. The painting had been bought in 1947 for $84,000. At Sotheby's on November 11, 1987, bidding opened at $15 million and the hammer came down at $49 million, or $53.9 million once the commission was added, beating the $39.9 million paid for a Sunflowers that March. The buyer was the Australian businessman Alan Bond, who couldn't finish paying for it, and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles bought it privately in 1990. One family owned the canvases at both ends of this list.

Which Van Gogh is the most expensive after inflation?

Gachet, easily. The $82.5 million of 1990 works out to around $210 million now, far past the $117 million paid for Orchard with Cypresses. Irises, at $53.9 million in 1987, comes to about $160 million, which would lift it from tenth to second. A nominal ranking rewards whatever sold most recently; a real one rewards 1987 and 1990, when three of his pictures in turn set the record for any painting sold at auction.

The Sunflowers that fell off the list

For most of 1987 a Sunflowers held the record. On March 30, 1987, Christie's London sold a version painted in January 1889 for £24 million, about $40 million, to the Tokyo insurer Yasuda. It was the first work of art to pass $30 million at auction, and the first time a modern picture, rather than an Old Master, held the record. Van Gogh painted it as his own repeat of the yellow-on-yellow version in London, and it now hangs in the Sompo Museum of Art in Tokyo.

At $40 million it sits well outside the top ten today. In current dollars it would be about $120 million, and if it ever came back to auction, the guesses run to several hundred million.

Great Van Goghs that never went under the hammer

Auction figures only count public sales. Some important pictures changed hands quietly. The Museum of Modern Art bought a Portrait of Joseph Roulin in 1989, the Metropolitan Museum acquired a version of the wheat field and cypresses from Saint-Rémy in 1993, and the hedge fund manager Steven Cohen bought Girl against a Background of Wheat in 1999. Private prices are rarely confirmed, so they stay off lists like this.

Works on paper keep their own records. The watercolor Wheatstacks, from June 1888, made $35.5 million at Christie's in November 2021. The drawing Sower in a Wheatfield with Setting Sun, from July 1888, sold at Sotheby's in November 2025 for $11.2 million, the most ever paid for a Van Gogh drawing. And once in a while a painting nobody knew about surfaces; the ones that turned up in attics and garage sales are a story of their own.

What the ten have in common

Look at the dates in the table. Nine of the ten were painted between April 1888 and June 1890, the Arles, Saint-Rémy and Auvers years, and the tenth is a Paris still life from the winter just before he went south. Six of the ten sold in 2014 or later. Half of his most expensive paintings have gone to collectors from China, even though every one of these sales happened in New York.

What buyers pay for is the late hand, the thick, fast brushwork of his last two and a half years,. If you'd rather know the pictures that made his name than the ones that set his prices, there's a separate ranking of his best-loved canvases, and a wider list of the paintings people know on sight across every period.

The same pictures, painted again by hand

None of these ten is coming to a wall near you, but the paintings around them can. Our studio copies Van Gogh by hand in oil on canvas, brushstroke by brushstroke, from Dr Gachet's tired face to the Saint-Rémy wheat fields and the London Sunflowers. You'll find every Van Gogh our painters work from in one place.

Sources

• The Art Newspaper: Orchard with Cypresses sets the record
• The Art Newspaper: Where is the portrait of Dr Gachet?
• The Art Newspaper: two Van Gogh records, November 2025
• Van Gogh Letters: letter 886, to Willemien
• Deseret News: 1889 self-portrait sells, 1998
• Sotheby's: L'Allée des Alyscamps, lot 18
• Sotheby's: Paysage sous un ciel mouvementé, lot 14
• UPI Archives: Irises sold for a record, 1987