Getty Museum Acquires Van Gogh’s ‘Irises,’ Declines to Disclose Price

The J. Paul Getty Museum announced today it has purchased the 19th-Century masterpiece “Irises” by Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh for an undisclosed sum.

Painted in 1889, “Irises” was sold to the Malibu museum by Alan Bond, the financially troubled Australian entrepreneur who paid a record $53.9 million for the work at a 1987 auction.

The painting is already on display in the museum’s second-floor galleries. It had been sent to the Getty Museum for examination and authentication two weeks ago.

In keeping with its policy of not discussing details of private acquisitions, the museum will not disclose the price of the work, the Getty said in a statement.

Art experts in Los Angeles said they would estimate a price range between $50 million and $70 million.

Since setting an art auction record when he bought the painting at Sotheby’s auction house in New York in November, 1987, Bond’s fortunes have slid. His brewing, media and property empire faces lawsuits by creditors.

The painting, made in 1889, shows irises growing in the garden of the asylum at Saint-Remy, France, where Van Gogh committed suicide the following year after a mental breakdown.

“ ‘Irises’ becomes the Getty’s greatest 19th-Century painting,” said Lori Starr, a museum spokeswoman said. “The chance to acquire the painting was a great moment in the history of the museum and its trust.”

“This is among the most original and dynamic of all van Gogh’s compositions, in which the spear-like, slashing representation of the flowers is echoed by the vibrancy of color,” said George Goldner, the Getty’s curator of paintings and drawings.

The private transaction was arranged by Sotheby’s New York auction house, which had loaned Bond $27 million to buy “Irises,” using the painting itself as collateral.

The deal was widely criticized as helping to create inflated prices in the international art market.

The auction house sold an Edouard Manet painting last November for Bond for $14.5 million, and this was said to have helped pay off his loan.

Bond was quoted by the auction house as saying: “I am very pleased with this sale, particularly because this great masterpiece will be on exhibition at such a pre-eminent museum.”

The painting was in a private European collection until 1947 when it was bought by New York philanthropist Joan Whitney Payson for $80,000. She bequeathed it to her son, John Whitney Payson, who sold it through Sotheby’s to provide funds for a charitable foundation.

“It’s wonderful that ‘Irises’ has returned to the United States for good,” the Getty Museum director, John Walsh, said.