Hundreds queue in Hong Kong to glimpse Van Gogh painting unseen in public for 60 years

By Joyce Zhou HONG KONG, Oct 13 (Reuters) — Hundreds of people queued in Hong Kong on Tuesday to view a Vincent van Gogh painting never publicly exhibited in more than six decades, ahead of a Sotheby's auction in New York where it is expected to fetch about $180 million. The November 18 auction will test the strength of the high-end art market, in which collectors have continued to compete for scarce trophy works, undeterred by broader economic uncertainty. Painted in May 1890, "Châtaigniers en fleurs", or "Chestnut Trees in Blossom", is one of the most important works from the Dutch artist's final days in the French village of Auvers-sur-Oise, where he died about two months later, aged 37. The painting is poised to set a new auction record for a Van Gogh work, said Scott Niichel, of Sotheby's modern and contemporary art department in New York. "This is a moment of extraordinary optimism, frenetic energy, enthusiasm, passion, and colour in the artist's body of work," he said. Paintings from Van Gogh's final Auvers-sur-Oise period, just after his release from a psychiatric asylum in Saint-Remy-de-Provence, rarely come to market and the auction will draw the attention of collectors,