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10 Most Expensive Paintings Sold at
Auction |
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The World's 10 Most Expensive Paintings Contents • The 10 Most
Expensive Paintings Sold at AUCTION |
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BEST PAINTINGS HOW TO READ a PAINTING |
10 Most Expensive
Paintings Sold at Auction (1) The Scream (1895) by Edvard
Munch ($119.9 million) (2012) What Makes a Great Painting? |
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1. The Scream
(1895) One of the greatest expressionist paintings ever, this Munch masterpiece holds a number of records. The most expensive painting ever sold at auction, it is also the highest priced work of modern art as well as the costliest of all pastel drawings. The work is seen as an expression of personal suffering. Munch's mother passed away when he was 5; his sister Sophie died when he was 14; his father died when Munch was 25, followed by his sister Laura who developed schizophrenia and was incarcerated in an asylum in Ekeberg. From Ekeberg Hill, the location depicted in the artwork, passers-by could hear screams from the asylum as well as the animals from a slaughterhouse nearby. It was also a scene of suicides. There are three other versions of this picture: the Munch Museum in Oslo owns two of them - a pastel as well as an oil - while the National Gallery of Norway holds the earliest version, an oil painting, dated 1893. |
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2. Nude, Green Leaves
and Bust (1932) Known as the "lost Picasso" because it had not appeared in public for almost 60 years this masterpiece - the world's most expensive work of abstract art ever sold at auction - last changed hands in 1951 for $18,000.
The sale means that Picasso - with 3 out of the top 10 - is now firmly established as the most valuable of all twentieth century painters. |
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3. Garcon a la Pipe
(1905) The most expensive work of figure painting, this Picasso masterpiece took a mere 7 minutes of bidding to reach the hammered price, which far exceeded the previous record of $82.5 million set by Van Gogh's Portrait of Dr Gachet in 1990, breaking the $100 million barrier in the process. Painted by the 24-year old Pablo Picasso during his more cheerful Rose Period, (following his mournful Blue Period), it is surely his most lyrical example of representational art, as well as one of the most iconic works of the early 20th century and the finest still in private hands. |
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WORLD'S BEST PAINTING |
4. Dora Maar au Chat
(1941) Dora Maar with Cat is a large, luminous, portrait of Picasso's mistress, seated on a chair with a small cat perched on her shoulders. Executed in the idiom of Cubism, the artist is trying to present several simultaneous views of Maar's face. When the work went on sale in 2006, it far exceeded its $50 million estimate, and became the second most expensive painting sold by an auctioneer in the history of art. An inspiration as well as a mistress, Dora Maar (1907-1997) was one of Picasso's favourite models and the subject of countless interpretations (eg. Weeping Woman) during the course of their dynamic relationship which endured for 11 years from 1935 to 1946. In this portrait of Maar, Picasso has added numerous deliberate narrative or symbolic elements, including: a hat, symbolizing a crown; a cat, alluding to feminine guile and sensual activity; long sharp fingernails (not visible in the picture) to reinforce the idea of feline aggression; a vibrant colour scheme picking out various details of Maar's dress (not visible). Whether these elements were intended to compliment or demonize Maar remains unclear. |
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TOP PAINTERS |
5. Portrait
of Adele Bloch-Bauer II (1912) In this second portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, which was painted five years after his first version, the earlier gold backdrop has been replaced by a quieter, more detached background. Even so, the halo-like hat and the focus on Adele's face points to Klimt's continuing regard for her. The painting also demonstrates the artist'snew attitude to colour (shorn of its use of gold), as well as his technique of combining elements of reality and unreality. Art critics typically swoon over this latter attribute. One has stated that in this composition: Klimt "demonstrated the liberation of visualization by effortlessly assimilating a whole series of influences and reworking them into a peculiarly inspired personal vision." Quite so. Personally, I think Klimt creates beautifully decorative art, with a few echoes of German Expressionism without justifying the artistic genius suggested by the record price of this canvas. However, he remains the driving force behind the historically important Vienna Secession, and can claim to be one of the best portrait artists of pre-war Europe. |
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6. Orange, Red, Yellow
(1961) The most expensive of all abstract paintings by a 20th century painter, and the highest price yet paid for a Rothko (the next highest is $72.8 million for his 1950 painting White Center: Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose bought at Sotheby's by Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani in 2007), the work - one of Rothko's masterpieces of Colour Field Painting - comprises blocks of orange and yellow paint on a red background. Not seen for the past 45 years, it was secured by an anonymous buyer after one of the longest bidding matches seen in a contemporary art sale, with bids leaping in increments of a million or sometimes two million dollars. |
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7. Triptych
(1976) A masterpiece of post-war contemporary art by one of the most famous painters of the modern era, Francis Bacon’s Triptych, is regarded as the most important painting by the artist in private hands. It was the focal work of Bacon's most significant exhibition of new work of the 1970s - one of the most sustained and productive periods in his career - which was staged at the Galerie Claude Bernard in Paris in 1977. In this triptych, Bacon utilizes Greek Mythology to depict his personal fate, disclosing in a single work his full range of imagery and iconography, with obvious echoes of surrealism. It is one of his most complex and imaginative works and bristles with classical narrative, much too complex to explain in a couple of sentences. Not surprisingly, given the quality of the work and the fact that Sotheby's had previously achieved five world record prices for works by Francis Bacon, Triptych smashed its pre-sale estimate of $70 million. See also, the list of Top-20 Contemporary Artists and Irish Art Market. |
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8. Portrait of Dr
Gachet (1890) The Dutch Post-Impressionist Van Gogh painted two portraits of Dr Gachet - the last-ditch psychiatrist with whom he stayed immediately prior to his suicide - each with a differing colour scheme. In both however, Van Gogh uses his unique style of expressionism to convey his view of Gachet's presence. The other portrait hangs in the Musee d'Orsay in Paris: sold in 1990 at Christie's for a world record price to the Japanese industrialist Ryoei Saito, it was reportedly resold to a European buyer in 1997 or 1998 for $70-$90 million. In both works, Van Gogh demonstrates a strong sense of empathy with the 62-year old widower Gachet, due to the latter's eccentricities and melancholic unease, and his attempt to seek solace in hard work. One of the artist's most sympathetic expressionist portraits, the work here deliberately conveys the doctor's "heartbroken expression", reinforced by the addition of a glass with sprigs of foxglove - a homeopathic plant used to treat depression, as well as two French novels about the mental stresses of Parisian life. |
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9.
Bal au Moulin de la Galette (1876) This Renoir masterpiece, the most expensive example of Impressionism ever sold, portrays a Sunday afternoon dance in a Montmartre dance garden. It is one of the best-known Impressionist paintings, and highlights the artist's unique skill in reproducing dappled light, which infuses the whole work with a soft-focus quality. Also visible in this genre painting are several of Renoir's artist friends. Curiously, the painting has two things in common with Van Gogh's Portrait of Dr Gachet. First, it too was purchased by Ryoei Saito and subsequently resold at a loss to a European art collector. Second, it too has a 'sister' version - a larger canvas which (again like the other Gachet) hangs in the Musee d’Orsay. It ranks alongside The Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881, Phillips Collection) - also by Renoir - as one of the greatest genre paintings in the pantheon of Impressionist art. |
 10. Massacre of the Innocents (1611) By Peter Paul Rubens. $76.7 million (£49.5m) (2002) Sotheby's, London |
10. Massacre of the
Innocents (1611) Smashing its pre-sale estimate of £5 million, this Flemish painting - the only example of Christian art in the Top 10 - is the most expensive work by an Old Master. It was purchased by Lord Thomson who later donated it to the Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada. A superb example of history painting, it depicts one of the most savage events in all Biblical art - the massacre of all new-born boys, ordered by Herod to prevent the emergence of a Messiah - and shows why Rubens is regarded as one of the best history painters of the 17th century. The composition contains all Rubens' usual themes: movement, muscle, flesh and above all, emotion. Look at his use of diagonals, colour contrasts and relationships between subjects - all of which help to involve the spectator. Compare this Flemish Baroque version of the story with the earlier Massacre of the Innocents by Pieter Bruegel. |
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Top 10 Most Expensive Paintings Sold Privately1. The Card Players (1892-93) One of several versions of the same picture - there are others in the Musee d'Orsay, Paris, and the Courtauld Institute Galleries, London - the painting is one of the most sought-after works still in private hands. 2. No 5 (1948) If unconfirmed reports are correct, Mexican financier David Martinez paid $140 million for this signature work by Jackson Pollock, making it the world's most expensive painting ever. Demonstrates the growing appetite for concrete art, but other factors may be involved: notably the relative rarity of Pollock's works, his unique drip/ splash style of 'action painting', and his American nationality. The 4' x 8' composition, comprising oil, enamel and aluminum paint on fiberboard, is a nest-like tangle of browns, yellows and greys. It exemplifies Pollock's all-over approach to fine art painting, which treats all areas of the canvas equally, rejecting all conventional points of reference or focus. |
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3. Woman III (1953) One of the most consistent and longest-lived exponents of the American Abstract Expressionism style, Dutch-born Willem de Kooning was noted for his biomorphic synthesis of figurative and abstract styles, often using the female form. Woman III is one of a series of six numbered 'Woman' paintings and the only one still in a private collection. The work's exploration of Freudian themes is visible in its staring eyes, huge breasts and distorted torso, as well as its aggressive brushwork and absence of 'human' colour. 4. Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907) This work changed hands when a court order by the Austrian government returned it to the Artist's rightful heir after its wartime confiscation by the Nazis. Despite its inflated price-tag, it remains one of the artist's great masterpieces and exemplifies his fascination with the flat decorative features of Egyptian art, the gold and mosaic elements of Byzantine works, Freudian and other symbolism. A romantic workaholic, Klimt's contribution to the Vienna Sezession and Germanic Jugendstil art movement included numerous portraits of Vienna’s leading ladies, of which this portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer - the wife of Jewish entrepreneur Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer - is considered a leading example. Klimt completed a second portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer in 1912 (see No 5 in the Top 10 Auction Records, above). 5. Eight Elvises (1963) Eight Elvises by Andy Warhol was sold by private treaty in 2009 to an anonymous buyer for $100 million, according to a report in the London Economist. The 12-ft high picture has not been seen in public since it was shown in Los Angeles in 1963. 6. False Start (1959) A founding father of Pop-Art, Johns is noted for his innovative use of mixed-media such as oils, waxed-based encaustic painting, plaster and collage (including flags, maps, stenciled words, numbers, newspapers and other 'found materials' or objets trouves). In this work, the most expensive painting by a living artist, Johns uses stenciled words on a brightly colored background which provide a literal allusion to the title False Start. This is because the words - which express colours, red, white and so on - are painted in (and are positioned on) contradictory colours to those described. The use of words exemplifies Johns' utilization of everyday images to stimulate the spectator. See also: Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008). |
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7. Police Gazette (1955) Another fantastically high-priced work of non-objective art by the Dutch/ American Expressionist de Kooning. Executed in oils, enamel, and charcoal on canvas, it is considered by critics to be one of his most complex landscapes. It was purchased from the artist Sidney Janis and eventually found its way to auction in 1973 where it attracted a record bid of $180,000 from the European dealer Ernst Beyeler. Given its present reported price of $63.5 million, it has appreciated in value 352 times, over 35 years. Not bad for a painting which (I suspect) few people would claim to understand, far less appreciate. I certainly don't. 8. A Wheatfield, with Cypresses (1889) Purchased mid-recession by the philanthropist Walter Annenberg, this outstanding landscape painting now hangs in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is one of three versions of the same scene, completed by Van Gogh while resident at the Saint-Remy-de-Provence mental institution, near Arles. A slightly later version, also painted in oils, resides in the National Gallery London, and a reed-pen drawing of the same view is in the Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam. The artist himself considered A Wheatfield With Cypresses to be one of his best summer landscapes, perhaps due to his improved mood which is evident from the sunny colours, non-aggressive brushwork and overall warmth of the work. 9. Turquoise Marilyn (1964) Another huge price for a celebrity portrait by the High Priest of Pop Art, negotiated near the top of the market. 10. Portrait of Alfonso d'Avalos (1533) A figure of $70 million was allegedly paid in 2003-4 for this outstanding piece of portrait art by Titian, the greatest figure in Venetian Painting. |
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10 Most Expensive Paintings Adjusted for Inflation When auction prices are compared by adjusting for inflation, Vincent Van Gogh's Portrait of Doctor Gachet emerges as the world's most valuable painting. 1. Portrait of Dr Gachet (1890)
- Vincent Van Gogh |
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• For more about the world's most valuable paintings, see: Art Encyclopedia.
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