Sotheby’s expects Van Gogh painting to fetch $30m-$50m

The world's billionaire art collectors have plenty to bid for in the big November art auctions in New York. The star lot is at Sotheby's which will offer Vincent van Gogh's Still Life, Vase with Daisies and Poppies in its Evening Sale of Impressionist & Modern Art on Tuesday (November 4th) with an estimate of $30 million -$50 million.

Painted just weeks before Van Gogh's death, "the artist uses the richly-coloured bouquet of wildflowers to convey his psychological state at the time", according to Sotheby's, and the "resulting composition teems with the intense energy, emotion and sensitivity of this creative genius at the height of his short but renowned career". The auction house says the painting is one of the few works Van Gogh sold during his lifetime, and is "one of only a handful of great works by the artist to appear at auction in recent decades".