Top 5 most expensive painting in the world

#5 Pierre-Auguste Renoir: Bal du moulin de la Galette

Sold for $78.1 million in 1990.
Buyer/Seller: Sold by Betsey Whitney to Ryoei Saito.
The Painting: Impressionist movement -- A 52x69 inch, oil on canvas.
The picture is of a Sunday afternoon at Moulin de la Galette in the district of Montmartre in Paris close to where Renoir lived.
The Artist: As a boy from a working class family, Renoir worked in a porcelain factory painting designs on china before enrolling in art school.
The largest collection of Renoirs, 181 paintings, resides at the Barnes Foundation, near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

#4 Vincent van Gogh: Portrait of Dr. Gachet

Sold for $82.5 million in 1990. Inflation-adjusted value: $139.5 million.
Buyer/Seller: Sold by Siegfried Kramarsky to Ryoei Saito.
The Painting: Dutch Post-Impressionist movement -- A 23x22 inch, oil on canvas.
There are two versions of this portrait of the doctor who took care of van Gogh in his final months.
The Artist: van Gogh said of the painting: "There are modern heads that may be looked at for a long time, and that may perhaps be looked back on with longing a hundred years later."

#3 Gustav Klimt: Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I

Sold for $135 million in 2006. Inflation-adjusted value: $145.3 million.
Buyer/Seller: Sold by Maria Altmann to Ronald Lauder and Neue Galerie.
The Painting: The Vienna Secession movement -- A 54x54 inch, Oil, silver, and gold on canvas.
The second painting of the wife of Klimt's patron Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer.
It took three years to complete.
The Artist: Klimt, who lived in poverty as a child, had two brothers who also showed artistic talent -- their father was a gold engraver, their mother a musician.

#2 Willem de Kooning: Woman III

Sold for $137.5 million in 2006. Inflation-adjusted value: $149.1million.
Buyer/Seller: Sold by David Geffen to Steven A. Cohen.
The Painting: Abstract expressionist movement -- A 68x49 inch, oil on canvas.
Owned by the Tehran museum since the late 70's, the painting was forbidden to be displayed after the 1979 revolution.
It was traded to Geffen in 1994 for a 16th century Persian manuscript.
The Artist: de Kooning left his job at a Rotterdam department store to become one of 38 artists to paint the murals at the 1939 World's Fair.
His first show was at the Charles Egan Gallery in New York 1948.

#1 Jackson Pollock: No. 5, 1948

Sold for $140 million in 2006. Inflation-adjusted value: $151.8 million.
Buyer/Seller: Sold by David Geffen to Steven A. Cohen.
The Painting: Abstract -- A 4x8 foot, piece of fiberboard covered with thick amounts of brown, gray and yellow paint drizzled from the top.
The Artist: Liquid paint was a novelty at the time Pollock used it.
Time Magazine dubbed him "Jack the Dripper" for his style.
The artist was a troubled and volatile alcoholic, reclusive, though he enjoyed a great amount of fame in his life.
He died in 1956, at 44, in an alcohol-related car accident.