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A Paul Gauguin painting of two Tahitian girls has become the world’s most expensive canvas after Qatar reportedly paid almost $300 million to its Swiss owner. The 1892 oil painting by the
French post-impressionist called _Nafea Faa Ipoipo_ (When Will You Marry?) was sold by the private collector Rudolf Staechelin, a retired Sotheby’s executive from Basel. Mr Staechelin, 62,
refused to name the buyer but it was believed to be the state-financed Qatar Museums, breaking its own world record sum paid for a single painting. The state had set the previous record in
2011 when it paid $259 million for _The Card Players_ by Paul Cezanne. Experts said that the sale could usher in a new era of trophy art purchases bypassing auction houses as owners sought
to strike lucrative direct sales. In recent years, oil-rich Qatar has lavished millions on Western modern art, including works by Mark Rothko and Damien Hirst. Mr Staechelin said that he
made the sale to diversify his family trust’s investments, most of which were tied up in a collection built by his grandfather of 26 valuable impressionist and post-impressionist works.
Advertisement The sale also marked the end of an era for the Kunstmuseum (art museum) in Basel, where the painting had been on loan for more than 60 years. The museum suffered an apparent
breakdown in relations with Mr Steachelin, who has withdrawn all his works and is said to be seeking to loan the remainder of the collection to a different gallery. “We are painfully
reminded that permanent loans are still loans,” the Basel museum said in a short statement. Gauguin painted _Nafea Faa Ipoipo_ during his first visit to Tahiti, aged 43-44, where he
travelled to escape “everything that is artificial and conventional” in Europe. It depicts two young women in a stylised landscape shown in vivid colours. One woman is shown in native dress
while the other wears the missionary style dress imposed by colonial rulers. It has been interpreted to represent the conflict between the two realms of European convention and Polynesian
custom. Gauguin returned to Polynesia in 1895, never to return to France, dying from an overdose of morphine at the age of 54 in 1903. Advertisement Mr Staechelin’s grandfather, a
businessman also called Rudolf, built up his collection which includes works by Van Gogh, Picasso and Matisse between 1917 and 1925. The collection went on loan to the museum in Basel after
his death in 1946 and was placed in a family trust. It is believed to be the first sale from the collection since 1989, when Mr Staechelin sold _Entre les Lys_, an 1889 Breton landscape by
Gauguin, for $11 million. He said that he had never had the paintings hanging in his home because they were too valuable, and they had always been out on loan. “In a way it is sad,” Mr
Staechelin told the _New York Times_. “But on the other hand, it is a fact of life. Private collections are like private persons. They don’t live forever.” He added: “I always tried to keep
as much together as I could. Over 90 per cent of our assets are paintings hanging for free in the museum.” There are few organisations which could afford to buy an oil painting for $300
million and if the art market rumours are true, the purchase by Qatar shows that the emirate has not ended its practice of buying up significant works following the death in November of
48-year-old Sheikh Saud bin Mohammed al-Thani. Advertisement The sheikh, who was the emirate’s minister for culture, arts and heritage, reportedly spent an estimated $1.5 billion on art
largely for the National Museum of Qatar. “We think this purchase is a sign from Qatar that their aggressive buying patterns remain unchanged despite the loss of a major cultural leader,”
said the brokerage firm Stifel in a note to clients on the art market. Global art sales have more than doubled from $6.3 billion in 2009. Auction sales made a total of $16.1 billion in 2014,
according to New York-based researcher Artnet.