Vincent van Gogh's Allee of Alyscamps fetches $66M at auction

A painting Vincent van Gogh created while briefly working side by side with his friend Paul Gauguin in the south of France brought in $66.3 million at auction Tuesday. (All figures in U.S. dollars.)

The Allee of Alyscamps was offered at Sotheby's impressionist and modern art sale. The autumnal scene was painted in 1888 during a two-month period when van Gogh and Gauguin worked together in Arles, France.

The painting, which had a presale estimate of more than $40 million, was sold to an Asian private collector, Sotheby's said. The auction record for a van Gogh, who died in 1890, is $82.5 million.

Van Gogh expert Clifford Edwards, a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, said, "To have a canvas from Arles by that very self-taught artist at the height of his work marks the sale as momentous."

Monets fetch millions

The sale also featured six paintings spanning four decades of Claude Monet's career.

The highlight was Water Lilies, a 1905 version of his beloved pond and gardens at his home in Giverny, France. It fetched $54 million, topping its high presale estimate of $45 million.

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Monet's 1908 painting of Venice with a view of the Palazzo Ducale on the Grand Canal fetched more than $23 million. It was confiscated by the Nazis from the noted collector Jakob Goldschmidt and was reclaimed by his son in 1960. It descended to a grandson, who died last year.