Gauguin Tahitian painting sells for $10.53mn at Paris auction
The painting depicts a stream with birds and flowers in a rich palette of blues and greens.
PARIS (Reuters) - A painting from French post-Impressionist painter Paul Gauguin’s Tahitian period sold for €9.5M ($10.53M USD) at auction in Paris on Tuesday (December 3), smashing its estimate of €5-7M ($5.48-7.64M USD).
The painting, which is titled "Te Bourao II", depicts a stream with birds and flowers in a rich palette of blues and greens and was sold at Paris’ Artcurial auction house. It was painted in 1897 while the artist was living in Tahiti, an island in the central Pacific.
Bought by a private collector, "Te Bourao II" will remain the only work still in private hands from a series of nine paintings centred around Gauguin’s masterpiece "Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?"
The painting is expected to remain in France, according to a statement from the auction house. Other works from the series are on display around the world, including at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg.
Gauguin has broken records in the past. In 2015, his work "When Will You Marry?", also from his Tahitian period, sold for $300m, making it the most expensive work of art ever sold at the time.
Born in Paris in 1848 and unappreciated until after his death in 1903, Gaugin was influential in the Symbolist movement and influenced modern artists like Picasso and Matisse.
His Tahitian paintings and sculpture, made between 1891 and 1901, are his most sought-after and colourful works, and very few are available in the art market.
