in Art, History | July 2nd, 2025 4 Comments
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.”
