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Hundreds of people queued in Hong Kong on October 13, 2026, to view a Vincent van Gogh painting not seen publicly for more than 60 years, as the work went on display at Sotheby’s ahead of a November auction in New York. Reuters reported that “Châtaigniers en fleurs” could fetch as much as $180 million, a sum that would eclipse previous records for the artist and serve as a gauge for the post-pandemic art market’s strength. The painting, created in the artist’s final months, is part of a trove of 12 rarely shown pieces from an Argentine collection that also features canvases by Monet, Cezanne and Pissarro, according to the auction house.
Van Gogh completed the landscape in Auvers-sur-Oise in May 1890, producing it during a period of intense creativity that yielded around 70 works in the weeks following his departure from a psychiatric asylum, an AFP report found. Sotheby’s vice chairman Scott Niichel told AFP that the piece was among the most expressive and hopeful from that time, with its heavy impasto layers revealing the painter’s frantic drive to create. “It’s one of the last, most expressive and hopeful works by van Gogh in this final phase of his career,” Niichel said. “This manic frenzy of paint application suggests he has so much more to give, and he’s just racing to put it to canvas.”
The projected price would surpass the current auction record for a Van Gogh of $117 million set in 2022 by “Orchard with Cypresses,” The Art Newspaper reported. The auction house said the work had not been exhibited in public since the mid-20th century, when it was held in private collections that included Van Gogh’s own family after his death. Crowds began forming early Tuesday at the Hong Kong preview, where staff carefully positioned the canvas for viewing, photographs distributed by Reuters showed.
One visitor who had journeyed from the mainland said she was compelled to see the piece in person after learning of its rarity. Li Shanshan, a 50-year-old art lover from Shenzhen, told Reuters, “I’d never heard of this painting before, so I wanted to see it with my own eyes.” Her comments reflected a broader enthusiasm that saw the queue stretch for the opportunity to witness a Van Gogh that had been hidden from view for generations.
The sale next month is likely to attract intense bidding as buyers seek to secure one of the few late-period works still in private hands, Reuters reported. Niichel further explained that the painting is from the last two months of Van Gogh’s life, during which he produced at a frantic rate averaging one work a day. He died at 37 after shooting himself in the chest, following well-documented mental health struggles, the vice chairman noted in his comments to AFP. The hopeful nature of the blossoming tree stands in contrast to the personal turmoil the artist was experiencing at the time, according to the Sotheby’s executive.
