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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 tripled 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. The current record price is approximately $300 million paid for Willem de Kooning's Interchange in November 2015, perhaps matched by the sale for "close to $300 million" of Paul Gauguin's When Will You Marry? in February 2015.
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Background
The world's most famous paintings, especially old master works done before 1803, are generally owned or held at museums, for viewing by patrons. The museums 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. On permanent display at The Louvre museum in Paris, the Mona Lisa was assessed at US$100 million on December 14, 1962. Taking inflation into account, the 1962 value would be around US$790 million in 2016.
The earliest sale on the list below (Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers by Vincent van Gogh) is from March 1987; with a price of £24.75 million (£62.8 million in current value) it tripled the previous record and introduced a new era in top art sales. Before this, the highest absolute price paid for a painting was £8.1 million (£18.0 million in current value) paid by the J. Paul Getty Museum for Mantegna's Adoration of the Magi at Christie's in London on April 18, 1985. In constant dollars, the highest price paid before 1987 was by the National Gallery of Art when in February 1967 they acquired Leonardo da Vinci's Ginevra de' Benci for around $5 million ($36 million in current dollars) from the Princely Family of Liechtenstein. The sale of Van Gogh's Sunflowers was also significant in that for the first time a "modern" (in this case 1888) painting became the record holder, as opposed to the old master paintings which previously had dominated the market. In contrast, there are currently only seven pre-1850 paintings among the top 48 listed.
An exceptional case is graffiti artist David Choe, who accepted payment in shares for painting graffiti art in the headquarters of a fledgling Facebook. While his shares were of limited value when he was awarded them, by the time of Facebook's IPO they were valued at around $200m.
Van Gogh, Picasso, and Warhol
Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, and Andy Warhol are by far the best represented artists in the list. Whereas Picasso and Warhol became wealthy men, Van Gogh (supposedly) sold only one painting in his lifetime, The Red Vineyard, for 400 francs (about $1800 in 2011) to the impressionist painter and heiress Anna Boch. His seven paintings in the list below alone were sold for over 730 million current dollars.
List of highest prices paid
This list is ordered by consumer price index inflation-adjusted value (in bold) in millions of United States dollars in the current year. 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 may be in a slightly different order due to exchange rate fluctuations. Paintings are only listed once, i.e. for the highest price sold.