Joan Whitney Payson

The family that sold Vincent van Gogh's "Irises" for $53.9 million two years ago will put a rose-period Picasso on the block Nov. 15 at Sotheby's New York. "Au Lapin Agile," a 1905 self-portrait expected to bring around $40 million or $50 million, has become "too expensive to keep," said Linda de Roulet, owner of the painting, in a prepared statement.

The family that sold Vincent van Gogh's "Irises" for $53.9 million two years ago will put a rose-period Picasso on the block Nov. 15 at Sotheby's New York. "Au Lapin Agile," a 1905 self-portrait expected to bring around $40 million or $50 million, has become "too expensive to keep," said Linda de Roulet, owner of the painting, in a prepared statement.

Judi Freeman, associate curator of 20th-Century art at the County Museum of Art, has resigned to become Joan Whitney Payson curator at the Portland Museum of Art in Portland, Me. Her resignation will be effective on June 18, after the opening of an exhibition of Mark Tansey's work, which she organized for LACMA. "I had been looking at a lot of different opportunities in which I could really mold a small museum, and this is a place of enormous potential," Freeman said of her new position.

Charles Shipman Payson, an industrialist, philanthropist and horse breeder, is dead at 86. Payson, who had embarked recently on a career as a thoroughbred breeder, died May 5 in the emergency room of Humana Hospital in Lexington, Ky. He had homes in Maine and Kentucky. Among Payson's philanthropies was a $17-million donation that led to the construction of the Portland Museum of Art building that bears his name. His donations also included 17 Winslow Homer paintings, valued at $6.4 million.

A scene in a Parisian tavern that Pablo Picasso painted when he was 25 in exchange for free meals and drinks sold for $40.7 million at auction Wednesday. The 1905 painting "Au Lapin Agile," in which Picasso depicts himself as a harlequin, is "the most important 20th-Century picture to come up for auction," said John L. Marion, chairman of Sotheby's North America. "It goes to the Annenburg Collection," Marion said as he hammered down the sale.

Here is a chronology of recent staff moves and funding decisions affecting the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which on Friday announced the resignation of Michael E. Shapiro: * April 28, 1992--Earl A. Powell III, director of LACMA since 1980, is named director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington. * Aug. 16, 1992--LACMA's board of directors appoints Shapiro, chief curator of the St. Louis Art Museum, as director of LACMA.

The J. Paul Getty Museum announced today it has purchased the 19th-Century masterpiece "Irises" by Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh for an undisclosed sum. Painted in 1889, "Irises" was sold to the Malibu museum by Alan Bond, the financially troubled Australian entrepreneur who paid a record $53.9 million for the work at a 1987 auction. The painting is already on display in the museum's second-floor galleries. It had been sent to the Getty Museum for examination and authentication two weeks ago.

When the Soviet government sold hundreds of paintings from the State Hermitage Museum in Leningrad in the 1930s, including masterpieces by Rembrandt, Raphael and Velazquez, they ended up working closely with one American art gallery: Knoedler & Company in New York. The gallery abruptly closed last year after more than 160 years in business. Now the Getty Research Institute is acquiring for an undisclosed sum the sales books documenting the Hermitage deals, among other resources that make up Knoedler's vast private archives.

Vincent van Gogh's "Irises," the famous depiction of a flower garden at an asylum the painter entered shortly before he committed suicide, sold Wednesday for a record price of $53.9 million. The buyer, who bid by telephone, was not identified. The price includes the high bid, $49 million, plus a 10% commission for the auction house, a Sotheby's spokeswoman said.

A rose-period cafe scene by Pablo Picasso sold Wednesday night for $40.7 million--the third highest auction price ever paid for an artwork. The buyer was philanthropist Walter H. Annenberg. "Au Lapin Agile," a 1905 portrait of the young Picasso as a harlequin, had been rumored to go even higher, possibly exceeding the record $47.9 million paid last May for "Yo Picasso," another early self-portrait, and even surpassing the $53.9 million commanded by Vincent van Gogh's "Irises" two years ago.

Shattering the record for a painting sold at auction--by more than $10 million--Vincent van Gogh's "Irises" commanded the astonishing price of $53.9 million at Sotheby's auction Wednesday night. The buyer was an unidentified European agent who placed bids by telephone. The lyrical canvas, inspired by a garden at the asylum where the troubled artist spent the last year of his life, was the crown jewel of a $110-million sale of Impressionist and modern paintings.