Paul Gauguin’s most famous oil painting ‘Nafea Faa Ipoipo” is expected to cost the buyer close to $300 million according to the New York Times. The buyer is suspected to be from Qatar, a small oil driven emirate.

The United Arab Emirate’s shatteredtheir own personal record in terms

of price for painting. Qatar reportedlyspent over $250 million in 2011 on‘The Card Players’ by Paul Cézanne.

The seller of the Gauguin is Rudolf Staechelin, 62 year old retired Sotheby executive, now in Basel, Switzerland. According to the New York Times, “A family trust owns more than 20 works in a valuable collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art, including the Gauguin, which has been on loan to the Kunstmuseum Basel for nearly a half-century.”

The owner of the painting, Staechelin obtained these paintings in a very obscure manner according to the New York Times, “The works were amassed by his grandfather, a Swiss merchant also named Rudolf Staechelin, who befriended artists and made most of his purchases during and after World War I. Later, the elder Mr. Staechelin advised the Kunstmuseum, which accepted the loan of his collection after his death in 1946.”

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