Legend has it that van Gogh, who died in poverty, sold only one painting before dying. What is this painting, and to whom was it sold?
The name of Vincent van Gogh still arouses curiosity today, and visitors from all over the world flock to the museums which today exhibit his paintings, some of which fetch high prices in auction rooms. . He is also the subject of numerous legends surrounding his romantic life: never recognized by the academies of his time, van Gogh died in destitution, long before his work was recognized at its true value. Among these legends, one of the most widespread is that the painter only sold one painting during his lifetime.
How many paintings did Vincent van Gogh paint?
If Vincent van Gogh is one of the best-known painters in the world today, his existence was much less glorious. Son of a Protestant pastor, the young van Gogh turned to religion for a time before choosing to become a painter. However, his avant-garde style, which prefigures fauvism, expressionism and pointillismas well as his difficult character, close the doors of many galleries to him.
His main moral and financial support comes from his younger brother. Theo van Gogh, Parisian gallery owner. He left the capital in 1888 to settle in Arles, where he painted most of the paintings that would later make him successful. In total, he painted more than 900 paintings in 8 years, but he did not sell any of them, undoubtedly partly by choice, because he believed that his work would one day increase in value. Plagued by numerous episodes of depression and dementia, the most famous of which led him to mutilate his ear with a razor blade on December 23, 1888 after threatening Paul Gauguin, van Gogh committed suicide in Auvers-sur-Oise in July 1890, when he was only 37 years old.
Who is Anna Boch, the one who bought the first and only painting during Vincent van Gogh’s lifetime, The Red Vine?
In 1888, van Gogh met Eugène Boch, a Belgian impressionist painter with whom he quickly became friends, and whose portrait he painted in Arles, which became The Star Painter. Eugène has a sister, Anna Boch, also a painter, who belongs to the Groupe des XX, an influential artistic avant-garde circle founded by his cousin, Octave Maus. van Gogh will be invited twice into the living rooms of those who were called the “twenties”.
In 1890, a few months before his death, he presented several of his paintings there, including two paintings from the Sunflowers series, but especially The Red Vine, oil painting of a harvest scene in the vineyards in Arles in November 1888. Anna Boch convinced van Gogh, out of friendship, to give it to her for the modest sum of four hundred francs. The Red Vine is still today the only known painting to have been sold during Vincent van Gogh’s lifetime, although traces in his correspondence with his brother Théo suggest that he could have sold a portrait.
Painting sales: which painting by Vincent van Gogh was sold for the most after his death?
Anna Boch bought another painting by van Gogh the year following his death, and subsequently became a respected Brussels collector and patron, helping to reveal painters like Georges Seurat and James Ensor. The work of van Gogh will largely be highlighted by Johanna BongerThéo’s widow who died a few months after her brother in January 1891. Her paintings were rediscovered and began to sell at high prices. In 1990, Japanese billionaire Ryoei Saito acquired the Portrait of Doctor Gachet at auction for more than $82.5 million., van Gogh’s personal doctor in Auvers-sur-Oise, which still makes it one of the most expensive paintings in the world today. The Red Vine is today exhibited at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow.
You may also be interested in:
⋙ Painting in detail: “Van Gogh’s Bedroom in Arles”, by Vincent Van Gogh
⋙ Van Gogh: the last moments of a misunderstood painter before his suicide
⋙ “The Magpie” by Claude Monet: an emblematic painting of the impressionist movement
⋙ Painting: Sonia Delaunay’s major contributions to abstract art
