Van Gogh to go on display before sale of ‘almost mythical’ private collection

For more than 50 years it was held in a private art collection with an “almost mythical status” that was likened to a miniature version of Paris’s Musée d’Orsay.

But a painting by Vincent van Gogh created during the last two months of his life will go on display this month before being put up for auction with a value of $180m (£136m).
Châtaigniers en fleurs (Chestnut Trees in Flower) was painted in May 1890 shortly after Van Gogh arrived in the French village of Auvers-sur-Oise. He died just weeks later.

Most Van Gogh works from this period now hang in the world’s leading museums – but Châtaigniers en fleurs is one of 12 impressionist and modern masterpieces from the collection of the Argentinian collector Nelly Arrieta de Blaquier, who died in 2020.