ART

Vincent van Gogh’s famous painting of sunflowers is expected to fetch a world record price when it goes up for auction at Christie’s in London on Monday. Art dealers and bidders expect the final sale price to be at least $16 million, which would easily top the present record-holder, the Renaissance masterpiece “Adoration of the Magi” by Andrea Mantegna, which fetched $10.4 million in April on 1985. The current record for a Van Gogh was paid in New York in April 1985 for “Landscape With Rising Sun,” which fetched $9.9 million. The painting, which was lent to the National Gallery in London for several years, comes from the collection formed in the 1920s and 1930s by Sir Alfred Chester Beatty, who had made a fortune as a mining engineer in Zambia. The sale follows the death of his daughter-in-law.