{"id":927487,"date":"2026-10-14T05:42:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-14T05:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/927487\/"},"modified":"2026-10-14T05:42:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T05:42:09","slug":"hundreds-queue-in-hong-kong-to-glimpse-van-gogh-painting-unseen-in-public-for-60-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/927487\/","title":{"rendered":"Hundreds queue in Hong Kong to glimpse Van Gogh painting unseen in public for 60 years"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hong Kong, China
Reuters<\/a><\/p>\n

Hundreds of people queued in Hong Kong on Tuesday to view a Vincent van Gogh painting never publicly exhibited in more than six decades, ahead of a Sotheby\u2019s auction in New York where it is expected to fetch about $US180 million.<\/p>\n

The 18th November auction will test the strength of the high-end art market, in which collectors have continued to compete for scarce trophy works, undeterred by broader economic uncertainty.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Staff members pose with Vincent van Gogh\u2019s \u201cChataigniers en fleurs\u201d (Chestnut Trees in Blossom) at a media preview ahead of its auction in New York, at Sotheby\u2019s in Hong Kong, China, on 13th October, 2026. PICTURE: Reuters\/Joyce Zhou<\/p>\n

Painted in May, 1890, Ch\u00e2taigniers en fleurs, or Chestnut Trees in Blossom, is one of the most important works from the Dutch artist\u2019s final days in the French village of Auvers-sur-Oise, where he died about two months later, aged 37.<\/p>\n

The painting is poised to set a new auction record for a Van Gogh work, said Scott Niichel, of Sotheby\u2019s modern and contemporary art department in New York.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a moment of extraordinary optimism, frenetic energy, enthusiasm, passion, and colour in the artist\u2019s body of work,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Paintings from Van Gogh\u2019s final Auvers-sur-Oise period, just after his release from a psychiatric asylum in Saint-Remy-de-Provence, rarely come to market and the auction will draw the attention of collectors, museums and investors.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d never heard of this painting before, so I wanted to see it with my own eyes,\u201d said Li Shanshan, a 50-year-old art lover who travelled about two-and-a-half hours from the southern city of Shenzhen to view the artwork.<\/p>\n

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The painting, which depicts a massive blossoming chestnut tree with a flowering canopy that dominates the composition, will be sold among part of a collection of 12 long-unseen works, including items by Paul Cezanne and Claude Monet.<\/p>\n

Five unveiled at Sotheby\u2019s in London in late September included Cezanne\u2019s Arlequin and Monet\u2019s Le Jardin des Tuileries.<\/p>\n

After Van Gogh\u2019s death in July, 1890, Ch\u00e2taigniers en fleurs\u00a0was passed to his brother Theo, and then to the latter\u2019s widow Johanna van Gogh-Bonger and their son Vincent Willem.<\/p>\n

Subsequently it was owned by German publisher Samuel Fischer, founder of S Fischer Verlag, before entering the collection of George \u201cBuddy\u201d DeSylva, the American songwriter, film producer and co-founder of Capitol Records.<\/p>\n

In 1953, the painting was acquired by collector Harriet Harris-Jonas, whose holdings were considered significant enough that New York\u2019s Metropolitan Museum of Art organised visits for patrons to view works in her Fifth Avenue apartment.<\/p>\n

The painting was acquired by the Blaquier family from art dealer Wildenstein in 1975.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hong Kong, ChinaReuters Hundreds of people queued in Hong Kong on Tuesday to view a Vincent van Gogh…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":927488,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[449,458,459,64,63,494740,494741,494742,460,134,10340,494743,45951],"class_list":["post-927487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-auvers-sur-oise","tag-chataigniers-en-fleurs","tag-chestnut-trees-in-blossom","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-hong-kong","tag-sotherbys","tag-vincent-van-gogh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/927487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=927487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/927487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/927488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=927487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=927487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=927487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}