Impressionist painting sells for record US$53m at NY auction

[NEW YORK] The Getty Museum in Los Angeles purchased Gustave Caillebotte's painting Young Man at His Window for US$53 million Thursday evening at a Christie's auction in New York, smashing the French Impressionist's previous record.

The painting was part of the Cox Collection of Impressionist art, named for Texas businessman Ed Cox who died in 2020.

The auction also included three works by Vincent van Gogh, which brought in more than US$150 million.

Among these were his oil on canvas Wooden Cabins among the Olive Trees and Cypresses, which sold for US$71.3 million, becoming one of the painter's most expensive works.

Another painting by Paul Cezanne, L'Estaque with Red Roofs, sold for US$55.3 million.

More than 20 pieces spanning Impressionist history - including works by Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Berthe Morisot - earned US$332 million at the auction, which took place at the Rockefeller Center in Manhattan.

In a press release, the Getty Museum celebrated its successful bid on Caillebotte's painting, which it called a "19th century masterpiece of modern urban realism... regarded as the most important paintings by (a) French Impressionist in private hands." The oil on canvas depicts a man in a dark suit with his back to the viewer, who seems to be looking at a woman in the distance on a Parisian street out a large window.

The record for a Caillebotte previously stood at US$22 million for his painting Rising Road, which sold at auction at Christie's in London in 2019.

AFP