This post was originally published on this site

Christie’s got New York’s fall auctions off to a roaring start Monday with a $479.3 million sale of impressionist and modern art, led by a van Gogh field scene that sold to a Chinese telephone bidder for $81.3 million.

Bidding for van Gogh’s “Farmer in a Field, Saint Rémy” became a battle between two telephone bidders—one in China, the other represented by Christie’s Chairman Marc Porter.

The…