The most famous paintings, especially
old master works created before 1803, are generally owned or held by
museums for viewing by patrons. Since museums rarely sell them, they are considered priceless.
Guinness World Records lists Leonardo da Vinci's
Mona Lisa as having the highest
insurance value for a painting. On permanent display at the
Louvre in Paris, the
Mona Lisa was assessed at US$100 million on 14 December 1962. The sale of Vincent van Gogh's
Sunflowers was the first time a "modern" (in this case 1888) painting became the record holder.
Old master paintings had previously dominated the market. '' (1888), the only painting the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh sold during his lifetime. It was sold for roughly US$2,000 (today's value). The list is incomplete with respect to sales between private parties, as these are not always reported and, even if they are, details like the purchase price may remain secret. For example, on June 25, 2019, the American hedge fund manager
J. Tomilson Hill bought a recently rediscovered
Judith and Holofernes (1607) attributed to
Caravaggio, two days before it would have been auctioned in
Toulouse. the painting was estimated to sell for $110 to $170 million. The actual purchase price was not disclosed, because of a confidentiality agreement attached to the private sale. Another example is a 2019 sale of
The Seated Zouave by Vincent van Gogh. According to some sources, the painting had been sold by Argentine art collector Nelly Arrieta de Blaquier for $300 million, but the price was not confirmed by any of the parties involved. Vincent van Gogh,
Pablo Picasso, and
Andy Warhol are the best-represented artists in the list. Whereas Picasso and Warhol became wealthy men, van Gogh is known to have sold only one painting in his lifetime,
The Red Vineyard, for (approximately $2,000 in 2018 dollars) in 1890, to the Belgian impressionist painter and heiress
Anna Boch.
Georgia O'Keeffe holds the record for the highest price paid for a painting by a woman. On November 20, 2014 at Sotheby's, the
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art bought her 1932 painting
Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 for US $44.4 million (equivalent to US$ million in ). Among the listed top paintings, only seven are by non-Western artists. Five are traditional
Chinese paintings by
Qi Baishi,
Wu Bin,
Wang Meng and
Xu Yang. In particular, Qi Baishi's
Twelve Landscape Screens was sold for $140.8 million in 2017. The only non-Western
modern artwork listed is that of the Chinese-French painter
Zao Wouki's oil painting
Juin-Octobre 1985, which was sold for $65 million in 2018. Also included in this list is Chinese painter Wang Shaofei's
The High Sun, which was sold at an estimated price of $74 million in 2017. ==List of highest prices paid ==