November Auction Lots

Overvalued
Vincent van Gogh
"The Fields (Wheat Fields)" (1890)
Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern Sale,
November 3
Unsold
Est. $28–35 million

No one could question the quality and rarity of this superb summertime 1890 landscape, completed just weeks before the artist fatally shot himself in the surrounding fields he so eerily captured. But the market is not always as stupid as it appears, and everyone knew the work had been serially shopped by every conceivable dealer on earth before Sotheby’s got a hold of it. The auction house was dead wrong in figuring it could find a buyer, even in the global pool of billionaires. Now the question is: What kind of value does the work retain after flaming out at a phantom bid of $25 million?

Courtesy Sotheby's