The Vincent van Gogh Painting Will Hopefully Be Arriving At Christie’s New York Auction House At 20 Rockefeller Plaza.
Vincent van Gogh is one of the most mythologised figures in art history. The Dutch Post-Impressionist is often recalled as a madman, painting in a tortured frenzy.
Vincent Van Gogh was a largely self-taught artist who didn’t pick up a paintbrush until he was 30-years-old and just seven years later. It was really his last four years where he developed the style we would come to know him by, and these are also his most prolific years.
Once he found his way, it was almost like he was making up for the lost time. His two years in Paris until February 1888 are widely seen as laying the foundation for his later unique style exposing him to the influence of impressionists such as Monet.
Many of that generation was influenced by Japanese prints, which would have a transformative effect on his work and lay the foundations for radical works like The Starry Night.
Now one of his landscape pieces, Van Gogh’s painting Fields Near The Alpilles, which the artist produced while he was committed to a French asylum, is coming to auction for the first time.
It is expected to fetch a price of around $45 million when it hits the auction block during a Christie’s 20th century art evening sale this May in New York.
Since it was created, this landscape has remained in private hands and has never been exhibited publicly.
It was previously owned by the designer Yves Saint Laurent and his partner Pierre Bergé, who sold it around 2003 to a private European collector. It changed hands one more time since then and has been owned by its current seller ever since.
The Dutch painter was admitted to the institution after cutting his ear off in Arles in December 1888. Van Gogh produced works that reflected his inner turmoil in this institution, and this landscape dream is no exception.
The painting depicts an expansive view of a bright green wheat field where monumental peaks of the Alpilles frame trees.
As Vincent van Gogh was led into his sparse cell on the first day, he must have been terrified but reassured to find that although the law had sliced his window with prison bars, the view was spectacular.
Wheatfields glowed in the sun with olive groves and vineyards receding into the distance of the foothills of a low mountain range called Les Alpilles.
Initially, he portrayed the world he saw from this room, but he would be allowed to wander around the dramatic countryside alone within weeks.
Here, he painted this; one of 2100 paintings, of which 860 were in oil. Even though he painted portraits and still lifes, his landscape paintings are his most celebrated works.
Although the estimated selling price is high, this is nothing compared to the record price of $82 million achieved by his Portrait du Dr Gachet in 1990.
So start saving up or putting some money aside. This auction is going to get steamy.