Paintings and sculptures belonging to the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen have sold for a record $1.5bn (£1.3bn).
It was the largest art auction in history, according to Christie’s.
The auction house said works by Vincent van Gogh, Georges Seurat, Paul Gauguin, Paul Cézanne and Gustav Klimt sold for more than $100m (£88m), breaking individual records for these artists.
Proceeds from the sale will be donated to charities Allen supported before his death in 2018.
The most expensive artwork purchased was Seurat’s 1888 Les Poseuses, Ensemble (miniature version), a renowned work of pointillism, which fetched $149.2m (£131m), including fees, said Christie’s.
Experts say the super wealthy view art as a safe investment amid a tumultuous global economy and Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Other record-breaking works included Van Gogh’s Orchard with Cypresses, which fetched $117.2m (£103m); Gauguin’s Maternity II, which sold for $105.7m (£93m); and Klimt’s Birch Forest, which went under the hammer for $104.6m (£92m).
Paintings from Georgia O’Keefe, Claude Monet, David Hockney, Andrew Wyeth and Pablo Picasso were also sold, along with sculptures by Alexander Calder and Max Ernst.
The collection’s total value has already beaten the record set earlier this year for the Macklowe collection, owned by a wealthy New York couple – which sold for $922m (£810m).
Mr Allen co-founded Microsoft in 1975 with his childhood friend Bill Gates.
He was treated for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2009 but returned and, in 2018, died of complications from the disease.
In 2010, he pledged to leave most of his fortune to charity after his death. At the time, according to Forbes magazine, he was the 37th richest man in the world, with around $13.5bn (then £8.8bn).
Another 90 lots from his collection will be sold on Thursday.
