3. The Card Players ( $ 266 million)
The Card Players is a series of oil paintings by the French Post-Impressionist artist Paul Cézanne. Painted during Cézanne’s final period in the early 1890s, there are five paintings in the series. The versions vary in size, the number of players, and the setting in which the game takes place. Cézanne also completed numerous drawings and studies in preparation for The Card Players series. One version of The Card Players was sold in 2011 to the Royal Family of Qatar for a price variously estimated at between $250 million ($266.2 million today) and possibly as high as $300 million ($319.4 million today), either price signifying a new mark for highest ever price for a painting, not surpassed until September 2015.
2. Interchange ($303 million)
Interchange, also known as Interchanged, is an oil on canvas painting by the Dutch-American abstract expressionist painter Willem de Kooning (1904–1997). It measures 200.7 by 175.3 centimetres (79.0 by 69.0 in) and was completed in 1955. It was one of de Kooning’s first abstract landscapes, and marked a change in his style under the influence of fellow artist Franz Kline. In September 2015, it was sold by the David Geffen Foundation to Kenneth C. Griffin for $300 million ($303.1 million today), a new mark for highest ever price for a painting, not surpassed until November 2017. It has been on loan at the Art Institute of Chicago