Discover the Only Painting Van Gogh Ever Sold During His Lifetime

It may have crossed your mind, while behold­ing paint­ings of Vin­cent van Gogh, that you’d like to own one your­self some­day. If so, you’ll have to get in line with more than a few bil­lion­aires, and even they may nev­er see one go up on the auc­tion block. This would prob­a­bly come as a sur­prise to van Gogh him­self, who died des­ti­tute — and prac­ti­cal­ly unknown — after an artis­tic career of just ten years. In that time, he man­aged to sell exact­ly one paint­ing, at least accord­ing to cer­tain def­i­n­i­tions of “sell.” Van Gogh did barter paint­ings for food and art sup­plies, and he did accept com­mis­sions, begin­ning with one from his art-deal­er uncle Cor. But as for sales made to non-rel­a­tives through an offi­cial show, we only know of one: La vigne rouge.

Known in Eng­lish as The Red Vine­yards near Arles, or sim­ply The Red Vine­yard, the paint­ing depicts a land­scape van Gogh came across “on a late after­noon walk with Paul Gau­guin on 28 Octo­ber 1888, five days after his friend’s arrival in Arles.” So writes Mar­tin Bai­ley at The Art News­pa­per, who adds that “pick­ing the grapes nor­mal­ly takes place in Sep­tem­ber in Provence, but the har­vest seems to have been late that year.”

To his broth­er Theo, Vin­cent described the scene thus: “A red vine­yard, com­plete­ly red like red wine. In the dis­tance it became yel­low, and then a green sky with a sun, fields vio­let and sparkling yel­low here and there after the rain in which the set­ting sun was reflect­ed.” The artist was not, how­ev­er, moved to set up his can­vas then and there; rather, he paint­ed the vine­yard the next month, from mem­o­ry.

Vin­cent let Theo hang the result­ing can­vas in his Paris apart­ment until he asked for it back in order to exhib­it it in the annu­al Brus­sels show put on by a group called Les Vingt in ear­ly 1890. The Red Vine­yards’ buy­er was one of their num­ber, a cer­tain Anna Boch, the sis­ter of van Gogh’s col­league in impres­sion­ism (and one­time por­trait sub­ject) Eugène Boch. Though she was no rela­tion, Anna did pay full stick­er price for the paint­ing, and van Gogh lat­er expressed some regret about not giv­ing her a “friend’s price.” But what­ev­er it cost her, it was sure­ly a steal com­pared to its val­ue today, after its pur­chase by a Russ­ian col­lec­tor, its rev­o­lu­tion­ary expro­pri­a­tion, and its long Sovi­et sup­pres­sion fol­lowed by proud exhi­bi­tion at Moscow’s Pushkin State Muse­um of Fine Arts — which, owing to the paint­ing’s fragili­ty, won’t even lend it out.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed con­tent:

1,500 Paint­ings & Draw­ings by Vin­cent van Gogh Have Been Dig­i­tized & Put Online

Vin­cent Van Gogh’s The Star­ry Night: Why It’s a Great Paint­ing in 15 Min­utes

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.