10 Most Expensive Paintings Ever Sold

Just the £104.6 million for a painting of Pablo Picasso's penis, then...

Vincent Van Gogh Gif Whether someone is an art connoisseur or not, everyone is fascinated by paintings that are sold for vast quantities of money. Some of the world's finest masterpieces - painted by the likes of Leonardo da Vinci, Andy Warhol and Claude Monet - are free to view at art galleries around the world, while other classic works are hidden from the global population due to the fact they have been purchased by private collectors or wealthy businessmen. Is it the love of art and the works themselves that drive these wealthy collectors to purchase such masterpieces for huge sums of money? Or do they merely buy paintings for obscene prices just because they can? Well, the answer probably differs from collector to collector. Celebrated names such as Vincent van Gogh and Pablo Picasso have seen their paintings sold for vast quantities of money - but some of the the top-10 most-expensive artworks in history have also been created by lesser-known artists such as Willem de Kooning and Paul Gauguin. The top 10 has been calculated by converting the suspected price paid at the time and then taking into account inflation to give a value equivalent to what would have been paid in 2015. So here are the 10 most-expensive paintings in history - and they have sold for a combined total of £1.18billion ($1.77billion)...
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NUFC editor for WhatCulture.com/NUFC. History graduate (University of Edinburgh) and NCTJ-trained journalist. I love sports, hopelessly following Newcastle United and Newcastle Falcons. My pastimes include watching and attending sports matches religiously, reading spy books and sampling ales.