The 25 Most Expensive Paintings

Ever Sold
By Eli Ellison on August 10, 2018

There’s truly no way to put a monetary value on the "Mona Lisa," which is considered priceless. But for some
masterpieces, parts of which are seen here, the price has been set.
Whether it's via auction or private sales, artworks by big-name
painters have drawn record-breaking prices in recent years. Some
buyers are billionaire art collectors seeking a trophy piece to hang in
their mansion. Others are investors with eyes on resale profit. And
then there are art museums, banking that adding a Picasso or Warhol
to their gallery will bring in the crowds.

This list includes only the most expensive paintings ever sold, not the
world's most valuable paintings. Though artworks are assessed for
insurance purposes, there’s truly no way to put a monetary value on
the "Mona Lisa," which is considered priceless.
The paintings are ranked by the original sale price in U.S. dollars. If the
amounts were to be adjusted for inflation, the list would look very
similar with only a few pieces changing position. And the top five
would remain as is.
25. "Nude, Green Leaves and Bust"

pablopicasso.org
Artist: Pablo Picasso
Year sold: 2010
Price: $106.5 million (auction)

Measuring more than 5-feet tall, this bold portrait of Picasso's

mistress Marie Therese-Walter may have been lost forever if not for
the artist's Parisian friend and art dealer, Paul Rosenberg. In the late
1930s, sensing the onset of World War II, he shipped the painting out
of France to New York, rescuing it from Nazi looting.

The work's current owner is the U.K.'s wealthiest man, Sir Leonard
Blavatnik, who has semi-permanently loaned the painting to London's
Tate Modern gallery.
24. "Flag"

MoMA
Artist: Jasper Johns
Year sold: 2010
Price: $110 million (estimated amount; private sale)

Johns's rendering of the American flag garnered the highest price ever
paid for a painting by a living artist.

In 1954, recently discharged from the U.S. Army, conceptual artist

Johns had a dream about the flag that inspired him to create a series of
encaustic paintings, in which melted, colored beeswax is used as paint.
In the case of "Flag," the red, white and blue wax was applied to
board-mounted collages of newspaper clippings.

Sounds like a simple idea, but this seminal work of the so-called "Neo-
Dada" movement would go on to inspire, for better or worse,
generations of pop artists.
This version of "Flag," purchased by uber collector Steven A. Cohen,
was created in 1958. If you'd like to admire the original 1954 entry in
the series, it hangs in New York's Museum of Modern Art.
23. "Untitled"

yusaku2020/Instagram
Artist: Jean-Michel Basquiat
Year sold: 2017
Price: $110.5 million (auction)

When a NYC graffiti artist's 1982 oil stick and spray painting of a skull
sold at Sotheby's, it marked the highest price ever paid for an artwork
created after 1980. If you're unfamiliar with Basquiat, think of him as
the original Banksy — a subversive street artist who rose from spray
painting cryptic epigrams on Manhattan walls to collaborating with
Andy Warhol, dating Madonna and having his work exhibited in
prestigious galleries and museums.

Basquiat died of a drug overdose in 1988, but his legend lives on,
especially for the buyer of “Untitled,” Japanese billionaire Yusaku
Maezawa. A major collector of contemporary art, he plans to someday
open a museum in his home town of Chiba, Japan.

In the meantime, you'll find a dozen Basquiat pieces on display at Los

Angeles's Broad museum.
22. "Young Girl with a Flower Basket"

Wikipedia
Artist: Pablo Picasso
Year sold: 2018
Price: $115 million (auction)

Brushed in 1905 during Picasso's "Rose Period," the piece was owned
for many decades by his personal friend and famed writer Gertrude
Stein, who once described the work as "a charming thing, a lovely
thing, a perplexing thing."

Later, her estate sold it to banking billionaire David Rockefeller, who

passed in 2017. A subsequent Christie's auction of 44 pieces from
Rockefeller's art collection, including this Picasso, hauled in a
whopping total of $646-million in one night.

The painting's new keeper is the high-profile, art-dealing Nahmad

family, who've loaned it to Paris's Musée d'Orsay for a Picasso
exhibition that runs through January 6, 2019.
21. "Reclining Nude With Blue Cushion"

WikiArt
Artist: Amedeo Modigliani
Year sold: 2012
Price: $118 million (private sale)

This 1917 painting by the Italian master is one of a series of nude

female portraits for which he's most celebrated today. But during
Modigliani's lifetime, he was the epitome of the self-destructive,
starving artist — sometimes trading his paintings for drink, drug and
food, and dying penniless at age 35 from tuberculosis.
"Modi" never got to see Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev fork
over piles of cash for one of his canvases. And fittingly, his Père-
Lachaise cemetery tombstone is etched with the epitaph "Struck down
by Death at the moment of glory."
20. "The Scream"

edvardmunch.org
Artist: Edvard Munch
Year sold: 2012
Price: $119.9 million (auction)

How is this portrait of existential angst — one of the most iconic

images in art history — not number one on this list? In short, there are
multiple Screams. Munch created four different versions of "Skrik" (its
title in Norwegian), the most famed rendition being the 1893 oil
painting on display in Oslo, Norway's National Gallery.

This work, bought by billionaire financier Leon Black, is a more

colorful pastel-on-board version done in 1895. As a bonus, the piece
resides in its original frame, inscribed by Munch with his own poem
about the painting.
19. "Otahi" (aka "Alone")

otahi
Artist: Paul Gauguin
Year sold: 2013
Price: $120 million (private sale)

Gauguin's early 1890s' paintings of native Tahitian women include a

forthcoming piece on this list as well as this 1893 work that fetched a
pretty penny when Russian tycoon Dmitry Rybolovlev snapped it up
in 2013.

Proving the trophy-art market isn't always lucrative, the Russian

resold "Otahi" in 2017 for reportedly less than $50 million — totaling
a loss of at least $70-million.

Ouch.
18. "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I"
Wikipedia
Artist: Gustav Klimt
Year Sold: 2006
Price: $135 million (private sale)

Austrian symbolist Klimt painted this portrait ("The Lady in Gold") of

a Jewish banker's wife in 1907, the apex of the artist's celebrated
“Golden Phase.”

The painting's proud owner is billionaire Ronald Lauder, who has it on

permanent display in New York's Neue Galerie, which he co-founded.

Another portrait of Bloch-Bauer and more backstory on the paintings

are ahead on this list.
17. "Woman III"
Wikipedia
Artist: Willem de Kooning
Year sold: 2006
Price: $137.5 million (private sale)

Painted in the early 1950s by Dutch expressionist de Kooning, the

piece once hung in Iran's Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art. But
after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the painting was deemed indecent
and taken down.

Enter David Geffen, who acquired the work in 1994 and ultimately
sold it to hedge fund billionaire Steven A. Cohen, who since the early
2000s has amassed what many speculate is the world's most valuable
private collection of contemporary art.
16. "No. 5, 1948"
jackson-pollock.org
Artist: Jackson Pollock
Year sold: 2006
Price: $140 million (private sale)

Drippings of brown, yellow, black and grey oil paint comprise one of
Pollock's most chaotic and iconic works. For you art trivia buffs, this
painting that sold in 2006 to an unknown buyer is not the original
work created by Pollock in 1948 and sold a year later for $1,500 to
fellow artist Alfonso A. Ossorio.

The painting's surface was damaged by a furniture moving company,

so Pollock offered to repair it himself, and in the process re-painted
the entire piece. Ossorio loved it, saying the do-over exhibited "a new
complexity and depth of linear interplay."

Um, ok. Is there an art theory-to-English translator in the house?

15. "Three Studies of Lucian Freud"
Artist: Francis Bacon
Year sold: 2013
Price: $142.4 million (auction)

In 1969, Irish artist Bacon painted his friend and artistic rival Lucian
Freud as a distorted figure in a cage. Not once, but thrice in separate
panels as a triptych. Bold, unsettling and strangely beautiful, the piece
sold to Elaine Wynn, ex-wife of casino mogul Steve Wynn, at Christie's
New York for what was then a record-setting art auction price.
14. "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II"
Wikipedia
Artist: Gustav Klimt
Year sold: 2016
Price: $150 million (private sale)
Austrian artist Klimt painted this vivid, Impressionist portrait of a
industrialist's wife in 1912. It was one of two formal portraits he
painted of Bloch-Bauer, the first 1907 version from Klimt's so-called
“Golden Phase” being the more famous of the pair.

Both pieces were looted by the Nazis during World War II, then given
to Vienna's Galerie Belvedere museum after the war. Following a
years-long legal battle, in 2006 the Bloch-Bauer estate regained
ownership of the artworks and promptly sold them. The buyer of this
1912 portrait was Oprah Winfrey, who in turn sold it to an
unidentified buyer in China.
13. "Le Rêve"
Wikipedia
Artist: Pablo Picasso
Year sold: 2013
Price: $155 million (private sale)

The French title of Picasso's erotic 1932 painting of his mistress,

Marie-Thérèse Walter, translates to "The Dream." But for casino
mogul Steve Wynn, his 12-year ownership of the artwork turned into
a nightmare on one fateful Las Vegas afternoon in 2006.

Wynn had just agreed to sell his prized Picasso to billionaire Steven A.
Cohen for $139-million. But first wanted to show off the painting to a
few friends in his casino office. Talking excitedly about its provenance
and gesturing wildly, Wynn accidentally thrust his elbow through the
canvas, causing a six-inch tear that instantly devalued the painting
roughly $55-million and negated the deal with Cohen. Among the
stunned onlookers that day was screenwriter Nora Ephron, who
recounted the scene in a must-read blog for the Huffington Post.
Cohen eventually bought the repaired canvas for a hefty sum. And one
can only guess how many times he's taken a magnifying glass to the
spot where Steve Wynn once punched a hole in a Picasso.
12. "Nu couché (sur le côté gauche)"

Wikimedia Commons
Artist: Amedeo Modigliani
Year sold: 2018
Price: $157.2 million (auction)

The newest entry on the list, Italian artist Modigliani's 1917

modernist painting of a reclining nude set a new all-time Sotheby's
New York auction price record when it sold to a so-far anonymous
buyer in May 2018. It's not the artist's most famed nude, which is "Nu
couché,” but it's bigger (nearly 5 feet by 3 feet) and features the entire
female figure from head to toe, an anomaly in his work.

If you're unfamiliar with the artist, Netflix the 2004 bio-pic

"Modigliani," starring Andy Garcia as the titular character. The
historical facts aren't entirely accurate, but hey, that's Hollywood.
11. "Masterpiece"

Wikipedia
Artist: Roy Lichtenstein
Year sold: 2017
Price: $165 million (private sale)

Inspired by comic book illustrations, Lichtenstein's 1962 pop art piece

has been called a tongue-in-cheek joke that portended the artist's own
celebrated career. "Masterpiece" stands alongside pieces such as
"Whaam!" and "Look Mickey" as his most famous works. So it's no
surprise hedge-fund billionaire and noted pop art collector Steven A.
Cohen paid through the nose to acquire it.
10. "Nu couché"
Wikipedia
Artist: Amedeo Modigliani
Year sold: 2015
Price: $170.4 million (auction)

The piece, Modigliani's most famous nude, made its public debut at
the artist's 1917 solo exhibition in Paris, which was promptly shut
down by police over charges of obscenity. Flash forward to a 2015
Christie's New York auction, in which it took an obscenely high bid to
win the artwork for Chinese billionaire Liu Yiqian, who reportedly
paid with his American Express card.
9. "Les Femmes d' Alger" ("Version O")
Wikipedia
Artist: Pablo Picasso
Year sold: 2015
Price: $179.4 million (auction)

Part of Picasso's 1954-55 series titled "Les Femmes d'Alger" ("Women

of Algiers"), this vibrant cubism tribute to artists he revered
(Delacroix, Matisse, Renoir) found the master at the top of his game
and fetched a pretty penny at the bang of a Christie's New York gavel.
The buyer was Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, former prime
minister of Qatar.
8. "Pendant portraits of Maerten Soolmans and
Oopjen Coppit"
Wikipedia
Artist: Rembrandt van Rijn
Year sold: 2015
Price: $180 million (private sale)

Classic portraiture seldom fetches stratospheric sums, but when a pair

of 1634 wedding portraits by Rembrandt came on the market, you
better believe the Louvre and Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum (who jointly
bought the artworks) stepped up with beaucoup bucks.

Art historians agree these masterful renderings of Dutch high-society

newlyweds must always be displayed together, so the museums take
turns hosting them. Newly restored, they're currently hanging in the
Louvre.
7. "Wasserschlangen II"
Wikimedia Commons
Artist: Gustav Klimt
Year sold: 2012
Price: $183.8 million (private sale)

Painted during Klimt's celebrated “Golden Phase,” in which his use of

gold leaf lent to stunning work, this serene 1904 painting features
curvaceous "water serpents" adorned with shimmering stars and
barnacles.

The piece was one of many high-dollar artworks (including paintings

by Gauguin and Rodin) that Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev
purchased from infamous Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier. The two have
since become entangled in a high-profile, ongoing fraud/art
theft/money laundering/tax evasion imbroglio the art world has
dubbed the "Bouvier Affair."
6. "No. 6 (Violet, Green and Red)"
Artist: Mark Rothko
Year sold: 2014
Price: $186 million (private sale)

Russian-American abstract-expressionist Rothko's hallmark

"multiform" paintings (two to three rectangular blocks of contrasting
yet complementary colors) aren't everyone's cup of tea. But his
profound influence on contemporary art cannot be denied. The sale of
"No. 6" marked a late chapter in the scandalous "Bouvier Affair" (see
No. 7 on this list: "Wasserschlangen II").
5. "Number 17A"
ArtStack
Artist: Jackson Pollock
Year sold: 2015
Price: $200 million (private sale)
This 1948 "drip painting" by Pollock not only commanded an eye-
popping price when David Geffen sold it to Citadel billionaire Kenneth
C. Griffin, it elicited the usual cries from Pollock critics whose gripe de
rigueur is "Ridiculous! Even I could paint that mess!" Perhaps,
but you didn't invent a radical technique that's been compared to
putting a Miles Davis song on canvas. Nor are you arguably the most
important American abstract painter of the 20th Century.
"Number 17A" isn't currently on public display, but museums with
noteworthy Pollock collections include New York's Museum of
Modern Art (MOMA) and Los Angeles' Museum of Contemporary Art
(MOCA).
4. "Nafea Faa Ipoipo"
Wikipedia
Artist: Paul Gauguin
Year sold: 2014
Price: $210 million (private sale)

French post-impressionist Gauguin's first-ever trip to Tahiti resulted

in several paintings of its native women, including this 1892 oil on
canvas that was met with critical indifference upon his return to
France. The painting's title translates to "When Will You Marry?"

In the fall of 2014, Sheikha Al-Mayassa of Qatar said "I do" to the piece
— to the tune of more than $200-million.
3. "The Card Players"
Wikipedia
Artist: Paul Cézanne
Year sold: 2011
Price: estimated $250 to $300 million (private sale)
One of five paintings in the French master's 1890s' series titled "The
Card Players," it features a pair of Provencal peasants seated at a
table, immersed in a card game, studying their hands. Art critics have
called it a "human still life." A New Yorker cartoon poked fun at the
notion by depicting the subjects playing not for money, but rather
fruit.
This version of "The Card Players" was purchased by the Royal Family
of Qatar and is not on public display. However you can see other
paintings in the series at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Philadelphia's Barnes Foundation museum and Paris' Musée d'Orsay.
2. "Interchange"
ArtStack
Artist: Willem de Kooning
Year sold: 2015
Price: $300 million (private sale)

Behold the priciest contemporary painting ever sold: Dutch-American

artist Willem de Kooning's famed 1955 abstract-expressionist work
inspired by his surroundings while living in NYC. Does the piece speak
to you? Or do you find it a colossal waste of cash?

Sold by the David Geffen Foundation and purchased by hedge fund

billionaire Kenneth C. Griffin (of Citadel), the piece was part of a $500-
million package that included Jackson Pollock's "Number 17A" ($300
for the de Kooning; $200 for the Pollock), which ranked No. 5 on this
list.

Want to see "Interchange" in person? It's currently on loan and

displayed at the Art Institute of Chicago.
1. "Salvator Mundi"
Wikipedia
Artist: Leonardo da Vinci
Year sold: 2017
Price: $450.3 million (auction)

A circa-1500 da Vinci painting of Jesus Christ holding a crystal orb

representing the “crystalline sphere” of the heavens? Ka-ching! There
are only a handful of the master's paintings that art historians
generally accept as the genuine article, and "Savior of the World" is
one. At the time of its record-breaking sale, it was also da Vinci's only
work held in a private collection; the rest are in museums or churches.

So who won the most expensive artwork ever sold at its headline-
grabbing Christie's New York auction? The Crown Prince of Saudi
Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, who purchased it on behalf of the Abu
Dhabi Department of Culture & Tourism. At some point in the future,
this Renaissance treasure will go on public display at the Louvre Abu
Dhabi.