This is a list of the highest known prices paid for paintings. The earliest sale on the list (Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers by Vincent van Gogh) is from 1987, and more than trebled the previous record price, set only two years before, introducing a new era in top picture prices. The sale was also significant in that for the first time a "modern" painting (in this case from 1888) became the record holder, as opposed to the old master paintings which had always previously held it. Since that time sales of the most valuable paintings have usually been made at auctions, though that had by no means always been the case before, and the list below still shows some "private sales", including the three most expensive. The current record price was paid for a work from 1948 by Jackson Pollock, and there are only three old master paintings on the list below.

The world's most famous paintings, especially old master works done before 1800, are generally owned by museums, which very rarely sell them, and as such, they are quite literally priceless. Guinness World Records lists the Mona Lisa as having the highest insurance value for a painting in history. It was assessed at US$100 million on December 14, 1962, before the painting toured the United States for several months. However, the Louvre chose to spend the money that would have been spent on the insurance premium on security instead. Taking inflation into account, the 1962 value would be approximately US$670 million in 2006.

List of highest prices paid at auctions or private sales (inflation adjusted)

This list is ordered by consumer price index inflation-adjusted value (in bold) in millions of 2009 United States dollars. Where necessary, the price is first converted to dollars using the exchange rate at the time the painting was sold. The inflation adjustment may change as recent inflation rates are often revised. A list in another currency would probably be in a slightly different order due to exchange rate fluctuations. Paintings are only listed once, i.e. for the highest price sold.

Before the March 1987 sale of Van Gogh's Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers for $39.7 million ($74.5 million in 2009 dollars), the highest absolute price paid for a painting was $10.45 million ($20.7 million in 2009 dollars) paid by the J. Paul Getty Museum for Mantegna's Adoration of the Magi at Christie's in London on April 18, 1985[32593]. In constant dollars, the highest price paid before 1987 was by the National Gallery of Art when in February 1967 they acquired Da Vinci's Ginevra de' Benci for around $5 million ($32 million in 2009 dollars) from the Princely Family of Liechtenstein.

Adjusted price (in millions)	Original price (in millions)	Painting	Artist	Year	Year of sale	Seller	Buyer	Auction house
$148.1	$140	No. 5, 1948	Jackson Pollock	1948	2006	David Geffen	David Martinez ?	private sale
$145.4	$137.5	Woman III	Willem de Kooning	1953	2006	David Geffen	Steven A. Cohen	private sale via Larry Gagosian
$142.8	$135	Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I	Gustav Klimt	1907	2006	Maria Altmann	Ronald Lauder, Neue Galerie	private sale
$134.6	$82.5	Portrait of Dr. Gachet	Vincent van Gogh	1890	1990	Siegfried Kramarsky family	Ryoei Saito	Christie's, New York
$127.4	$78.1	Bal du moulin de la Galette	Pierre-Auguste Renoir	1876	1990	Betsey Whitney	Ryoei Saito	Sotheby's, New York
$117.6	$104.2	Garçon à la pipe	Pablo Picasso	1905	2004	Greentree foundation (Whitney family)		Sotheby's, New York
$101.2	$53.9	Irises	Vincent van Gogh	1889	1987	son of Joan Whitney Payson	Alan Bond	Sotheby's, New York
$100.7	$95.2	Dora Maar au Chat	Pablo Picasso	1941	2006	Gidwitz family		Sotheby's, New York
$99.7 +	$58 plus exchange of works	"Portrait of Joseph Roulin"	Vincent van Gogh	1889	1989	Swiss private Collection	Museum of Modern Art New York	Private sale via Thomas Ammann Fine Art Zurich
$93.5	$71.5	Portrait de l'artiste sans barbe	Vincent van Gogh	1889	1998	heirs of Jacques Koerfer		Christie's, New York
$93.0	$87.9	Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II	Gustav Klimt	1912	2006	Maria Altmann		Christie's, New York
$90.9	$76.7 (£49.5)	Massacre of the Innocents	Peter Paul Rubens	1611	2002	an Austrian family	Kenneth Thomson	Sotheby's, London
$85.5	$86.3	Triptych, 1976	Francis Bacon	1976	2008		Roman Abramovich [32594]	Sotheby's, New York
$84.8	$49.3 (F300)	Les Noces de Pierrette	Pablo Picasso	1905	1989	Fredrik Roos	Tomonori Tsurumaki	Binoche et Godeau Paris
$84.6	$80.0	False Start	Jasper Johns	1959	2006	David Geffen	Kenneth C. Griffin	private sale via Richard Gray
$84.1	$57	A Wheatfield with Cypresses	Vincent van Gogh	1889	1993	son of Emil Georg Bührle	Walter H. Annenberg	private sale via Steven Mazoh
$82.3	$47.85	Yo, Picasso	Pablo Picasso	1901	1989	Wendell Cherry	Stavros Niarchos	Sotheby's, New York
$79.7	$80.4 (£40.9)	Le Bassin aux Nymphéas	Claude Monet	1919	2008	J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller		Christie's, London
$77.4	$60.5	Rideau, Cruchon et Compotier	Paul Cézanne	1894	1999	Whitney Family		Sotheby's, New York
$74.9	$72.8	White Center	Mark Rothko	1950	2007	David Rockefeller, Sr.	Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani	Sotheby's, New York
$74.5	$39.7 (£24.75)	Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers	Vincent van Gogh	1888	1987	daughter-in-law of Chester Beatty	Yasuo Goto, Yasuda Comp.	Christie's, London
$73.7	$71.7	Green Car Crash	Andy Warhol	1963	2007	Private Collection, Switzerland		Christie's, New York
$70.6	$70.6 (£50)	Diana and Actaeon	Titian	1556-1559	2009	Duke of Sutherland	National Galleries of Scotland & National Gallery, London	private sale [32595] [32596] [32597]
$70.0	$40.7	Au Lapin Agile	Pablo Picasso	1904	1989	daughter of Joan Whitney Payson	Walter H. Annenberg	Sotheby's, New York
$69.4	$38.5 (£20.9)	Acrobate et jeune Arlequin	Pablo Picasso	1905	1988	heir of Roger Janssen?	Mitsukoshi	Christie's, London
$68.1	$55.0	Femme aux Bras Croisés	Pablo Picasso	1902	2000	McCormick family, Chicago		Christie's, New York
$67.2	$63.5	Police Gazette	Willem de Kooning	1955	2006	David Geffen	Steven A. Cohen	private sale, Richard Gray Gallery
$64.3	$48.4	Le Rêve	Pablo Picasso	1932	1997	Ganz family	Wolfgang Flöttl [32598]	Christie's, New York.
$63.5	$49.6	Femme assise dans un jardin	Pablo Picasso	1938	1999	Robert Saidenberg		Sotheby's, New York
$63.1	$47.5	Peasant Woman Against a Background of Wheat	Vincent van Gogh	1890	1997		Stephen Wynn	private sale via Acquavella Galleries Inc., New York
$60.5	$35.2	Portrait of a Halberdier	Pontormo	1537	1989	Chauncey Devereaux Stillman	Getty Museum	Christie's, New York

Gallery

Image:Gustav Klimt 046.jpg|Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (Klimt)Image:Portrait of Dr. Gachet.jpg|Portrait of Dr. Gachet (Van Gogh)Image:Renoir21.jpg|Bal au moulin de la Galette, Montmartre, (Renoir)Image:VanGoghIrises2.jpg|Irises (Van Gogh)Image:Vincent Willem van Gogh 102.jpg|Portrait de l'artiste sans barbe (Van Gogh)Image:Gustav_Klimt_047.jpg|Adele Bloch-Bauer II (Klimt)Image:Ruebens massacre.jpg|Massacre of the Innocents (Rubens)Image:Vincent Willem van Gogh 049.jpg|A Wheatfield with Cypresses (Van Gogh) (may not be the version sold in 1993)Image:Paulcezanneart.jpg|Rideau, Cruchon et Compotier (Cézanne)Image:Van Gogh Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers.jpg|Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers (Van Gogh)

Notes

1. Reportedly, Gachet's portrait was privately resold to a European buyer in 1997 or 1998 for $65-$90 million through Sotheby’s [1] [2]
2. This is the small version of the painting; the large version is at Musée d'Orsay.
3. Privately resold for ca. $50 million through Sotheby’s in 1997 [3]
4. Alan Bond could not pay off the painting, and Irises was resold (probably for somewhat less) to the Getty Museum.
5. Kimmelman, Michael: How the MoMA got the Van Gogh, New York Times, 09 October 1989.
6. Later in 2002, Thomson donated his private collection, including the Rubens, to the Art Gallery of Ontario [4]
7. Most expensive painting by a living artist
8. Annenberg donated it subsequently to the Metropolitan Museum of Art
9. Steve Wynn, who bid on the painting at auction, privately acquired the work several months later from the unidentified buyer for an undisclosed, supposedly lower price. Kenneth Griffin acquired it in 2004 from Wynn [5]. Some news articles, probably by mistake, claim that Griffin was the buyer at Sotheby's in 1999 [6].
10. resold for £12m to Stavros Niarchos in 1993
11. In October 2006, Steve Wynn purportedly agreed to sell Le Rêve to Steven Cohen for $139 million, but Wynn accidentally elbowed a hole in the middle of the canvas, thus scuppering the sale. The sale would have made Le Rêve the most expensive painting at the time.
12. On Oct. 7, 2005, The New York Times reported that Steven Cohen bought van Gogh's "Peasant Woman Against a Background of Wheat" and Gauguin's "Bathers" (1903) from Steve Wynn for approximately $110 million [7], though guesses range from $100-150 million. One or both of the paintings may thus occur higher on this list.

External links

• Crème de la Crème: Most Expensive Paintings
• List of Most expensive Indian Paintings
• Top 100 most expensive paintings (French)
• www.most-famous-paintings.org A website dedicated to the most famous 1000 paintings in the history of art.