ALAN BOND (1938–2015)

Former billionaire Alan Bond has passed away. He was the man who once purchased Vincent van Gogh’s The Irises, 1889, for a record-breaking sum, according to Artnet’s Amah-Rose Abrams.

Bond, a property developer, was perhaps most famous for underwriting Australia’s bid for the 1983 America’s Cup. When he bought The Irises for $53.9 million in 1987, he told reporters “It’s the most important painting in the world”—but later it became known that Sotheby’s had in fact lent Bond twenty-seven million dollars when he couldn’t pay for the artwork, leading critics to deem it a “manipulated sale.” In 1990 he sold the piece to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles for an undisclosed amount.

In 1996 he was sentenced to three years in prison for using his position as a director of Bond Corp. inappropriately, allowing his family company to purchase Manet’s La Promenade, 1880, for $2.4 million—a steep discount.

His collection also included works by Paul Gauguin, Auguste Renoir, Henri de Pablo Picasso, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Camille Pissarro.