After the Ganzes died (Victor in 1987 and Sally in 1997), their collection, including Le Rêve, was sold at Christie's auction house on November 11, 1997, as a means of settling their inheritance tax bill.

The buyer who purchased Le Rêve at Christie's in 1997 appears to have been the Austrian-born investment fund manager Wolfgang Flöttl, who also briefly held Van Gogh's Portrait of Dr. Gachet in possession in the late 1990s.

While Wynn was showing the painting to his friends, apparently about to reveal the now still officially undisclosed previous owner (see above), he put his right elbow through the canvas, puncturing the left forearm of the figure and creating a six-inch tear.

Wynn filed a claim to recover the $54 million perceived loss from his Lloyd's of London insurers, an amount which would have covered most of the initial cost of buying the painting.

[10] Ignoring inflation, the price was estimated to be the highest ever paid for an artwork by a U.S. collector until Kenneth C. Griffin's ~$300 million purchase of Willem de Kooning's Interchange in September 2015.