Most expensive painting sold at a private sale

A work by French Post-Impressionist painter Paul Gauguin, Nafea Faa Ipoipo (When Will You Marry?, 1892), was sold from the private collection of retired Sotheby’s executive Rudolf Staechelin in February 2015 for $300 m (£210.4 m), the most ever paid in a private art sale. The 1892 oil painting shows two Tahitian women, and is one of a series of works created during the first of Gauguin’s two visits to the French Polynesian island, which took place in 1891. Seven months later, US business tycoon Ken Griffin also reportedly paid $300 million, for Dutch American artist Willem de Kooning's Interchange (1955).

Interchange was bought alongside a $200-m (£129-m) piece by Jackson Pollock, Number 17A (1948).