Dozens of works by artists together with Paul Cézanne and Vincent van Gogh have been bought for a complete of $1.5 billion at an public sale of the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s huge assortment of work and sculpture, the Guardian reported.

With this, the public sale garnered the best quantity ever collected at a single artwork public sale, in response to the public sale home, Christie’s. Proceeds from the public sale can be donated to philanthropic causes in accordance with the desires of Paul Allen, who died in 2018.

Paul Allen personally chosen all of the works, which span greater than 500 years, saying in 2016, “While you have a look at a portray you’re wanting into a distinct nation, into another person’s creativeness, how they noticed it.”

The profitable bids additionally smashed earlier information for particular person artists and plenty of exceeded the anticipated gross sales costs estimated by the public sale home which had mentioned forward of the sale that the public sale was “poised to be the biggest and most distinctive artwork public sale in historical past”, eclipsing the $922 million achieved by the sale of the Macklowe assortment in Could.

Among the many priciest works bought was Georges Seurat’s Les Poseuses, Ensemble (Petite model), an 1888 oil on canvas depicting three nude girls that fetched $149.2 million.