(“Still Life, Vase with Daisies and Poppies,” was one of the last works Vincent van Gogh completed before his death in 1890.“ It was also one of the artist’s only privately owned works. In 1911 it was sold to the Berlin art dealer Paul Cassirer. In 1962 it was loaned to Buffalo’s Albright-Knox Art Gallery, where it remained on view for decades, before being bought by a private collector. It reemerged in 2014 at Sotheby’s, selling for $61.8 million, and was briefly on display in Beijing. Now its owner and whereabouts are unknown. The bidding for Lot 17 started at $23 million. In the packed room at Sotheby’s in Manhattan, the price quickly climbed: $32 million, $42 million, $48 million. Then a new prospective buyer, calling from China, made it a contest between just two people..On the block that evening in November 2014 were works by Impressionist painters and Modernist sculptors that would make the auction the most successful yet in the firm’s history. But one painting drew particular attention: “Still Life, Vase with Daisies and Poppies,” completed by Vincent van Gogh weeks before his death.Pushing the price to almost $62 million, the Chinese caller prevailed. His offer was the highest ever for a van Gogh still life at auction. After a painting by the Dutch artist sold at auction, a movie producer claimed to be the owner. It later vanished from sight, with a trail leading to Caribbean tax havens and a jailed Chinese billionaire. In the discreet world of high-end art, buyers often remain anonymous. But the winning bidder, a prominent movie producer, would proclaim in interview after interview that he was the painting’s new owner. The producer, Wang Zhongjun, was on a roll. His company had just helped bring “Fury,” the World War II movie starring Brad Pitt, to cinemas. He dreamed of making his business China’s version of the Walt Disney Company. The sale, according to Chinese media, became a national “sensation.” It was a sign — after the acquisition of a Picasso by a Chinese real estate tycoon the year before — that the country was becoming a force in the global art market. “Ten years ago, I could not have imagined purchasing a van Gogh,” Mr. Wang said in a Chinese-language interview with Sotheby’s. “After buying it, I loved it so much.” In May 1890, van Gogh arrived in Auvers-sur-Oise, a rustic village outside Paris. Deeply depressed, he had cut off much of his left ear a year and a half earlier. His stay at an asylum had not helped. But within hours of coming to the village, he met Paul-Ferdinand Gachet, a doctor and an art enthusiast. “I’ve found in Dr. Gachet a ready-made friend and something like a new brother,” van Gogh wrote to his sister. The physician encouraged van Gogh to ignore his melancholy and focus on his paintings. He completed nearly 80 of them in two months, including “Portrait of Dr. Gachet,” considered a masterpiece. He produced “Vase With Daisies and Poppies” at the physician’s home and may have given it to him in exchange for treatment, biographers say.
After van Gogh’s death in July 1890, the painting passed to a Parisian collector, and then, in 1911, as the artist’s fame was rising, to a Berlin art dealer. A series of German collectors owned it before A. Conger Goodyear, a Buffalo industrialist and a founder of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, bought it in 1928. His son George later granted partial ownership to Buffalo’s Albright-Knox Art Gallery, which displayed it for nearly three decades. The fortunes of the men connected to the van Gogh purchase began to turn in 2015 with the crash of the Chinese stock market. Mr. Xi’s government blamed market manipulation by well-connected traders, and regulators wrested economic power back from the billionaires. Dozens of financiers disappeared, only to resurface in police custody. Art purchases became more discreet. In 2016, Oprah Winfrey sold a Klimt painting to an anonymous Chinese buyer for $150 million.By early 2017, Mr. Xiao’s life as a free man was over. One night, about a half-dozen men put him in a wheelchair — he was not known to use one — covered his face and removed him from his Hong Kong apartment. He was taken to mainland China and eventually charged. Prosecutors claimed that his crimes dated back before 2014, the year the van Gogh was sold.He was sentenced last August to 13 years in prison for manipulating financial markets and bribing state officials. The court said Mr. Xiao and his company had misused more than $20 billion. Government officials dismantled his companies in China. At some point, the British Virgin Islands business that bought the van Gogh changed hands and Mr. Liu was removed as its owner.For a while, Mr. Wang, the producer, maintained a high-flying lifestyle, opening a private museum in Beijing in 2017 that showcased the van Gogh and Picasso paintings for a few months. But the market value of his film studio, Huayi Brothers, vaporized as it backed flops. Mr. Wang let go much of his art collection and his Hong Kong home. Last year the Beijing museum was sold off, along with a mansion tied to him in Beverly Hills. Mr. Wang and a spokesman for his company did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Mr. Xiao could not be reached for comment in prison, though a family representative said the billionaire’s wife did not know of any involvement in the van Gogh purchase and was unfamiliar with Mr. Liu.Van Gogh’s floral still life — a vibrant painting by one of the world’s most acclaimed artists — hasn’t been seen publicly for years. But there are reports that the artwork may be back on the market. Three people, including two former Sotheby’s executives and a New York art adviser, requesting anonymity, said the painting had been offered for private sale. Last year, the adviser viewed a written proposal to buy it for about $70 million.The art experts did not know whether the painting had sold or if concerns had been raised about the 2014 sale — a purchase by a onetime lieutenant to a now disgraced billionaire linked to a beleaguered film producer who claims the art belongs to him.“Nobody needs a $62 million van Gogh, and nobody wants to buy a lawsuit,” said Thomas C. Danziger, an art lawyer. “If there’s any question about the painting’s ownership, people will buy a different artwork — or another airplane.”)
