Vincent Van Gogh Only Sold One Painting In His Lifetime. What Was The Title Of The Painting?

The Red Vineyard is among Van Gogh'due south virtually dramatically coloured Provençal landscapes, but information technology is also famed for being the but painting that the artist is certain to have sold. It went for 400 francs (so £sixteen) at a Brussels exhibition in March 1890, four months before his suicide.

The picture is now in Russia, at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. Recently the museum decided to conserve the motion picture, to ensure its long-term preservation. This led to the first investigation of The Red Vineyard using modern scientific techniques, unearthing fascinating discoveries.

The Ruby Vineyard in the Pushkin's conservation studio, Moscow, 2021 Credit: Pushkin Museum, Moscow

Van Gogh came across the vineyard on a late afternoon walk with Paul Gauguin on 28 October 1888, five days after his friend'south arrival in Arles. Picking the grapes normally takes place in September in Provence, but the harvest seems to have been belatedly that year. On around 11 Oct Vincent had written to his brother Theo: "There are bunches weighing a kilo, even—the grape is magnificent this yr, from the fine autumn days."

Vincent described the vineyard scene he had witnessed with Gauguin: "A red vineyard, completely blood-red similar scarlet wine. In the distance information technology became xanthous, and then a green sky with a sun, fields violet and sparkling xanthous here and in that location afterwards the pelting in which the setting sun was reflected."

Although Van Gogh liked to paint landscapes outdoors, he completed The Red Vineyard dorsum in his studio—using his imagination. Gauguin was then encouraging him to make his pictures more creative, less literal. No uncertainty the two artists discussed this vineyard scene on their return later on the walk—over a glass or two of the local Provençal ruby wine.

Van Gogh's fiery colouration is certainly farthermost. The vines are much redder than i would await, with Vincent describing it every bit the color of the establish Virginia Creeper. On the right of the composition is what might appear as a river, but it is a road, glistening wet after contempo pelting. The huge lord's day, setting in a late autumnal afternoon, produces an eerily yellow heaven.

In the upper left, the row of trees shelters a road running north-east from Arles. On the horizon, to the far right, ane tin just make out the afar ruins of the abbey of Montmajour, painted in low-cal blueish.

The Pushkin Museum's examination of The Red Vineyard, sponsored by LG Signature, has revealed important details about how the picture was developed. Parts of the sun and sky are created from paint squeezed directly from the tube onto the sheet, with the artist sometimes using his finger to smooth it out.

A technical assay shows that the colouration of the sky has been partly lost. Van Gogh used chrome yellow paint, which darkens with exposure to calorie-free. His original yellows would take been even brighter and still more dramatic.

Van Gogh also made changes to the composition. The man standing in the road in the upper correct was originally a woman dressed in a skirt, white blouse and hat.

The prominent woman in dark blue angle over a basket, in the central foreground, was added later on. The woman on the far right, by the edge of the road, wears the traditional costume of the Arlésiennes, the famed women of Arles. The Pushkin specialists suggest that she represents Van Gogh's friend Marie Ginoux, who with her hubby ran the Café de la Gare, just a few doors from the Yellow House, the artist's home and studio.

The Red Vineyard has an unusual history. In Apr 1889 Vincent sent the painting to Theo in Paris. Describing it as "very beautiful", Theo hung it in the Parisian apartment he had merely moved into with his helpmate Jo Bonger.

A few months subsequently Vincent was offered the opportunity to exhibit a few paintings at an exhibition organised by the group Les Vingt in Brussels in Jan 1890. Amongst those he chose was The Red Vineyard, which he asked Theo to dispatch. At the bear witness information technology was bought past Anna Boch, who kept it until 1907.

The two early collectors: Anna Boch (Théo Van Rysselberghe's Portrait of Anna Boch, 1892) and Ivan Morosov (Valentin Serov'due south Portrait of Ivan Abramovich Morosov, with a painting past Henri Matisse in the groundwork, 1910). Credit: © Michele and Donald D'Amour Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, Massachusetts; The James Philip Gray Collection (Jon Polak Photography) and Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

Two years later on The Ruby Vineyard was acquired by the avant-garde Moscow collector and material factory owner Ivan Morosov. The asking toll had risen to 30,000 francs, an indication of Van Gogh's rapid ascension to fame.

Morosov's collection was nationalised in 1918, a twelvemonth afterwards the Russian Revolution. In 1919 he emigrated to Finland, dying in 1921. Initially Morosov's paintings were kept in his Moscow mansion, which was turned into a public museum.

In 1948, The Red Vineyard was among the works transferred to the Pushkin Museum. Even so during Stalin's later years it was not on display, since he regarded Modern French art as inappropriate for a Communist society. Post-obit de-Stalinization, afterwards the leader's decease in 1953, the Van Gogh once again went on show. The Reddish Vineyard has remained in Moscow and has non been sent out on loan for over 60 years.

The question of the painting'southward condition recently came upward with the organisation of a major exhibition of the Morosov collection in Paris. Eventually information technology was decided that the Van Gogh was too fragile to travel. The Pushkin director Marina Loshak admitted that it was "very deplorable" that this "ill" painting could not travel to outside exhibitions. Hence the determination to conserve information technology.

The exhibition The Morozov Drove: Icons of Modern Art is now on at the Fondation Louis Vuitton until iii April (with nearly 200 works of Modernistic art, merely without The Blood-red Vineyard). The show has proved a spectacular success, having already attracted over 800,000 visitors. The concluding figure could reach i.2 million by the closure, an astonishing number, particularly during the pandemic.

One question that the Pushkin volition now have to consider is the presentation of The Red Vineyard, which has been hung in an ornate gilded frame. This frame probably dates from the time of Morosov's conquering, in 1909. It has go role of the history of the painting, so it is unlikely to exist changed.

Merely a fancy gilt frame was not at all what Vincent had intended. In a letter to Theo he gave his own views on framing: "simple strips of wood nailed on the stretching frame and painted." He drew an accompanying rough thumbnail sketch of the framed painting.

Vincent van Gogh's quick sketch of the framed The Ruby-red Vineyard in a letter of the alphabet to Theo, x November 1888 Credit: Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

The Cherry-red Vineyard is even so in the Pushkin's conservation studio, but it is due to proceed display this summer in the museum'south presentation of the Paris exhibition, Brother Ivan: the Drove of Ivan and Mikhail Morozov (27 June-thirty Oct).

Van Gogh'south companion Gauguin also painted his own depiction of the vineyard which they had seen together during their walk most Montmajour. But his version of the scene could inappreciably have been more different. Indeed, at first glance, information technology looks little similar an autumnal harvest.

Paul Gauguin's Human Misery (The Wine Harvest) (November 1888). Credit: Ordrupgaard Collection, Copenhagen

Gauguin'southward painting, which he initially entitled Human Misery (Nov 1888), focuses on a melancholic woman whose figure was inspired by a contorted Peruvian mummy that the creative person had seen in a Paris museum. Behind her are two rows of dumbo vines, with a couple of stooping pickers, set against a strong yellow-ochre background.

Van Gogh commented on Gauguin's technique, saying that the composition with the grieving woman had come up from his friend's "caput", from his imagination. "If he doesn't spoil information technology or leave it unfinished it volition be very beautiful and foreign," Vincent commented.

Gauguin himself believed it was his "best picture" of the twelvemonth—although its sombre championship can inappreciably take boosted the chances of a sale. Only like Van Gogh's painting information technology, too, soon found a buyer—Emile Schuffenecker, a progressive artist friend. It was in the artistic circle of the avant-garde that the piece of work of both Van Gogh and Gauguin was showtime appreciated—and plant buyers.

Other Van Gogh news:

Yesterday, the Courtauld opened its exhibition Van Gogh Self-Portraits (until 8 May). The critics take greeted it with adoration, attracting 5-star reviews from UK publications including the Times, Guardian, Daily Telegraph and Evening Standard.

Van Gogh: Self-Portraits at the Courtauld Gallery, Feb 2022. Photo: © Fergus Carmichael, courtesy of the Courtauld Gallery

Martin Bailey is the author of Van Gogh'due south Finale: Auvers and the Artist'south Ascent to Fame (Francis Lincoln, 2021, available in the U.k. and Usa ). He is a leading Van Gogh specialist and investigative reporter for The Art Newspaper. Bailey has curated Van Gogh exhibitions at the Barbican Art Gallery and Compton Verney/National Gallery of Scotland. He was a co-curator of Tate United kingdom's The EY Exhibition: Van Gogh and Britain (27 March-eleven Baronial 2019).

Martin Bailey's recent Van Gogh books

Bailey has written a number of other bestselling books, including The Sunflowers Are Mine: the Story of Van Gogh's Masterpiece (Frances Lincoln 2013, available in the UK and US ), Studio of the South: Van Gogh in Provence (Frances Lincoln 2016, available in the UK and US ) and Starry Night: Van Gogh at the Asylum (White Lion Publishing 2018, available in the Great britain and United states of america ). Bailey's Living with Vincent van Gogh: the Homes and Landscapes that Shaped the Artist (White Lion Publishing 2019, available in the Britain and U.s.a. ) provides an overview of the creative person's life. The Illustrated Provence Messages of Van Gogh has been reissued (Batsford 2021, bachelor in the UK and United states of america ).

• To contact Martin Bailey, please email: vangogh@theartnewspaper.com. Please kindly refer queries about authentication of possible Van Goghs to the Van Gogh Museum .

Read more from Martin's Adventures with Van Gogh bloghither.

Vincent Van Gogh Only Sold One Painting In His Lifetime. What Was The Title Of The Painting?,

Source: https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2022/02/04/how-did-the-only-painting-sold-by-van-gogh-in-his-lifetime-end-up-in-russia

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