Most Expensive Artworks and Paintings
Portrait of Joseph Roulin , Vincent Van Gogh (£36.7 million) In 1989 the Museum of Modern Art in New York bought this painting from a private collection in Zurich for $58 million (£36.7 million). Accounting for inflation, this remains one of the most expensive paintings ever sold. The portrait was painted exactly 100 years before the sale and is one of six Van Gogh painted of his close friend Roulin, who was a postman in Arles. Les femmes d'Alger (Version O) – Picasso (£116 million) To hollering cheers and applause, a lot of head-shaking and even more gasps, a Pablo Picasso masterpiece went under the hammer for a world record auction price on Monday evening of $179.4 million (£116m). There was an audible intake of breath in Christie's Rockefeller Centre auction room in midtown Manhattan when the bids for the vibrantly-hued canvas of Les femmes d'Alger (Version O) hit $150 million. At $151 million, Jussi Pylkkanen, the Christie's president, chief auctioneer