Gauguin painting sold for $300 million, smashing previous record

A Paul Gaugin painting has sold for “close to $300 million” (£197 million), smashing the previous record for the most expensive single work of art.

The 1892 painting of two Tahitian girls by the French post-impressionist called ‘Nafea Faa Ipoipo?’ (When Will You Marry?) was sold by Swiss collector Rudolf Staechelin to the state-financed Qatar Museums in a private sale.

Staechelin’s family trust had inherited the work from his grandfather, along with 25 other valuable impressionist and post-impressionist works.

The painting had been on permanent loan to the Kunstmuseum in Basel for half a century, but Staechelin recently withdrew all his works from the museum after apparently falling out with the institution.

The sale broke the previous record for the most expensive artwork, a record set in 2011 with the sale of Paul Cezanne’s The Card Players for $159 million (£105 million).

Paul Gauguin’s Nafea Faa Ipoipo (1892)