A remarkable collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist masterworks, hidden from public view for half a century in South America, will come to market next month with a combined estimated value approaching half a billion dollars.
The auction house Sotheby’s announced Wednesday that twelve paintings from the private collection of the late Nelly Arrieta de Blaquier and her husband Carlos Pedro Blaquier will be offered for sale November 18 in New York. The collection includes works expected to set new auction records for Vincent van Gogh and Paul Cézanne, two of the most celebrated artists of the nineteenth century.
Among the crown jewels is van Gogh’s landscape “Châtaigniers en fleurs,” depicting chestnut trees in flower, carrying an estimate of $180 million. Alongside it stands Cézanne’s portrait “Arlequin,” valued at $120 million. Neither painting has been exhibited publicly in fifty years.
The van Gogh landscape captures a particularly poignant moment in the artist’s troubled life. Created shortly after his release from a psychiatric asylum in May 1890, the work radiates what experts describe as an explosion of energy and vitality. Tragically, van Gogh would take his own life just two months later.
The Cézanne portrait represents one of only four paintings in which the artist depicted his son dressed as the Harlequin figure from commedia dell’arte. The other three reside in major museums, making this sale a rare opportunity for collectors.
The Blaquier collection, assembled over decades by the Argentine sugar magnate and his wife, reads like a catalog of Impressionist achievement. Additional works include Parisian cityscapes by Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro, a horse-racing scene by Edgar Degas, and a boating composition by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Each carries valuations in the tens of millions of dollars.
Helena Newman, who leads Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern art division, characterized the collection as resembling a private Musée D’Orsay, the renowned Paris institution housing one of the world’s finest assemblages of Impressionist art. In more than three decades with the auction house, Newman said she has never encountered a collection of comparable quality and significance.
What makes this collection particularly extraordinary is not merely the caliber of individual works, but the disciplined vision behind its assembly. The Blaquiers succeeded in acquiring representative masterworks by each major figure of the Impressionist and post-Impressionist movements, a feat that art experts acknowledge as remarkably difficult to achieve.
The collection’s legendary status derives partly from the family’s decision to keep the works private, declining to loan them for exhibitions. This discretion created an aura of mystery that art expert Philip Hook described as tremendously exciting now that the collection’s contents have been revealed.
The timing of this sale reflects broader patterns in the global art market. Newman noted that in periods of geopolitical and economic uncertainty, wealthy collectors increasingly seek security in established masterworks of unquestionable quality. The appeal spans continents and cultures, with expected interest from American technology entrepreneurs, well-funded Middle Eastern institutions, and affluent collectors throughout North America, Europe, and Asia.
Museum-quality Impressionist collections of this caliber rarely come to market, making the November sale a significant event for the international art world. The Blaquier children’s decision to part with their parents’ carefully assembled treasures will offer a select group of buyers the opportunity to acquire works that have remained outside public knowledge for generations.
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