The most valuable paintings ever sold

Every price on this list has a footnote. Auction results include the buyer's premium, a fee of 12 to 25 percent on top of the hammer price. Private sales are reported by people who were not party to them, and at least one on this list was first reported $90 million too high. Each table gives the price as paid and, beside it, the same sum in today's money (September 2026 dollars, by the US Consumer Price Index): the 1990 prices in the second table are two and a half times larger that way. With those cautions, here is the list as the record stands, in US dollars, sourced row by row.

The twenty highest prices ever paid for a painting

The two prices paid in euros, the Rembrandt pair and the Rothko, are left as reported; the Rothko's today's-money range is from the dollar figures reported at the time. Today's-money figures use the US Consumer Price Index annual average for the sale year against September 2026, rounded to the million.

Notes on the rows. The Rembrandt pair and the Rothko are ranked by their euro prices as reported at the time; the Rothko's dollar figure depends on which day's exchange rate a newspaper used, which is why two numbers are given. Gauguin's Nafea was first reported, by the New York Times in February 2015, at nearly $300 million; the figure of $210 million emerged in the London High Court in January 2018, when the dealer Simon de Pury sued the sellers for his commission (the judgment was upheld on appeal in 2019), and that is the one we use. Adele Bloch-Bauer I, the Lichtenstein and Le Rêve were reported by the New York Times and never confirmed by the buyers. Just outside the twenty, all at auction: Munch's 1895 pastel of The Scream ($119.9 m, 2012), Van Gogh's Verger avec cyprès ($117.2 m, 2022), Monet's Meules ($110.7 m, 2019), Basquiat's Untitled of 1982 ($110.5 m, 2017), Klimt's Lady with a Fan (£85.3 m, about $108.8 m, 2023), Gauguin's Maternité II ($105.7 m, 2022), Klimt's Birch Forest ($104.6 m, 2022) and Picasso's Garçon à la pipe ($104.2 m, 2004).

The records that stood: the world auction record since 1990

Half the drama of the price list is in which painting held the record and for how long. These are the auction prices that were, on the night, the highest ever paid for a painting.

Two days after the Gachet, on 17 May 1990, Renoir's smaller Bal du moulin de la Galette made $78.1 million at Sotheby's, the second highest price ever paid at that point; both went to the same buyer, the Japanese paper industrialist Ryoei Saito. The Gachet record stood fourteen years. The Leonardo's has stood nine so far and nothing has come within $200 million of it.

What the list tells you

Modern and post-war art dominate. Fourteen of the twenty were painted after 1900 and eight after 1945. The reason is supply. The great Old Master and Impressionist paintings went into museums between 1850 and 1950 and museums almost never sell, so what remains in private hands, and can therefore set a price, is mostly twentieth-century. Leonardo and Rembrandt are on the list precisely because a Leonardo or a pair of Rembrandts coming to market is a once-a-generation event, and the two Cézannes, the Seurat and the Gauguin all came from three private collections (Embiricos, Staechelin, Allen) assembled before the museums closed the door.

Old Masters rarely trade, and when they do the arguments start. Salvator Mundi is the most expensive painting in history and also the most disputed: it was sold at Sotheby's in London in 1958 for £45, catalogued as the work of a follower of Leonardo, then restored and attributed to Leonardo himself between 2005 and 2011, and specialists still disagree about how much of it is his hand. The price was paid for the possibility. The Rembrandt portraits, by contrast, are beyond doubt and went to two national museums, which is the other way an Old Master leaves the market: for good.

Private sales distort the top of the table. Four of the top six are private sales, and not one of those four prices was confirmed by a buyer or seller. They come from newsletters, a magazine, and in Gauguin's case a lawsuit. The highest fully documented price is the Leonardo; the highest fully documented price for a twentieth-century painting is the Klimt portrait sold in November 2025. Treat anything marked "reported" as a well-sourced rumour.

A handful of buyers make the list. Qatar bought the Cézanne and the Gauguin; one Chicago collector bought the de Kooning and the Pollock in a single deal; one New York collector bought the Lichtenstein and Le Rêve; one Russian collector bought the Rothko. Remove five buyers and the list above $150 million shrinks to the auction results.

Inflation does not change the top, but it changes the middle. In today's money Salvator Mundi is about $619 m and the de Kooning about $427 m, so the order at the top holds. Lower down it moves: Van Gogh's Dr Gachet, $213 m in 1990 dollars, would still make the first table today, around fourteenth, and Renoir's Bal du moulin de la Galette, sold two days later, would sit around sixteenth at about $201 m. A 1990 record was a bigger event than its headline number now suggests.

Fame and price barely overlap. Compare this list with the most famous paintings in the world. One work appears on both, the Klimt portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, and the Scream that set a record is a pastel, not the Oslo painting everyone knows. The Mona Lisa, the Night Watch, the Birth of Venus, the Starry Night: none has a price because none is for sale, and the famous Van Gogh on the records table is the one almost nobody has seen since 1990. Price measures scarcity among people with the money. Fame measures reproduction.

Why price is not fame, in one painting

Portrait of Dr Gachet is the best case. Van Gogh painted two versions in June 1890, weeks before his death. The first went to auction at Christie's in May 1990, sold for $82.5 million to Ryoei Saito, then the highest price ever paid for a painting, and disappeared: Saito said he wanted it cremated with him, it was sold privately in the late 1990s, and The Art Newspaper's 2019 investigation could only place it in a Swiss collection. The second version, which Van Gogh gave to Gachet himself, hangs in the Musée d'Orsay and is the one every reproduction shows. The expensive Gachet is invisible. The famous Gachet is free to see, and it is the one we print.

Which of these can you own, and which can you not

The rule is simple: a painting enters the public domain seventy years after its artist's death, and from then on anyone may reproduce it. Ten of the twenty rows, and three of the six records, are by artists who qualify.

Public domain, and on this site.

• Leonardo da Vinci (died 1519). We print Salvator Mundi from the pre-sale photography, with the attribution question stated on the product page.
• Rembrandt (died 1669). The Soolmans and Coppit portraits are not in our catalogue; The Night Watch and the rest of our Rembrandt prints are.
• Vincent van Gogh (died 1890). The Orsay Portrait of Dr Gachet, and the Van Gogh collection. The Allen-sale orchard is in a private collection.
• Pierre-Auguste Renoir (died 1919). The Orsay Bal du moulin de la Galette, the large version; the one sold in 1990 is the smaller replica. More in Renoir prints.
• Paul Cézanne (died 1906). The Metropolitan Museum's Card Players, one of five; the Qatar picture is another. More in Cézanne prints.
• Georges Seurat (died 1891). Les Poseuses is private; the Art Institute's A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, the painting Les Poseuses is a study after, is here. More in Seurat prints.
• Paul Gauguin (died 1903). Nafea Faa Ipoipo is not in the catalogue; the Tahitian paintings we print are in Gauguin prints.
• Claude Monet (died 1926). The 1890 Meules that sold is private; the Orsay Haystacks, End of Summer from the same series is here, with the rest in Monet prints.
• Gustav Klimt (died 1918). Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I is here, printed from the Neue Galerie's painting. The Lederer portrait, Lady with a Fan and Birch Forest are not; see Klimt prints.
• Edvard Munch (died 1944). The 1893 painted Scream in Oslo; the pastel that sold is in a private collection. More in Munch prints.
• Amedeo Modigliani (died 1920). The exact painting that sold in 2015, Nu couché, now at the Long Museum, is here, alongside the Met's Reclining Nude of the same year. The 2018 picture is not in the catalogue; see Modigliani prints.

Not public domain. Picasso died in 1973, Pollock in 1956, Rothko in 1970, Magritte in 1967, de Kooning in 1997, Bacon in 1992, Warhol in 1987, Lichtenstein in 1997, Basquiat in 1988. Their estates and foundations license every reproduction, and none of these works can be printed without that licence. We do not sell them and do not link to them. Pollock, the earliest, enters the public domain in 2027 in countries using the seventy-year rule; the others follow between 2038 and 2068.

What a print of one of these costs here is not a footnote to the table but its opposite: from $39 on 250 gsm archival paper, made to order, black or dark wood frame if you want one, free shipping in the United States. The $450 million bought one panel and an argument. The scan is the same for everyone.

The art in this piece

Fine art

Portrait of Dr. Gachet

Vincent van Gogh

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Fine art

Nu couché (Long Museum)

Amedeo Modigliani

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Fine art

Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (Woman in Gold)

Gustav Klimt

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Fine art

The Scream

Edvard Munch

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Fine art

The Card Players

Paul Cézanne

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Fine art

Bal du moulin de la Galette

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

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Fine art

Haystacks (End of Summer)

Claude Monet

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Fine art

Salvator Mundi

Leonardo da Vinci

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More in the Journal: why we can sell Van Gogh explains the seventy-year rule and its exceptions; the most stolen artworks is the other list where the Gachet belongs; and the pillar, the most famous paintings in the world, is where fame and price part company.