February 24, 2021

Van Gogh painting shown for the first time

Filed under: Art,Dutch first by Orangemaster @ 4:44 pm

A never before shown work by Vincent van Gogh will be auctioned off on 25 March in Paris by Sotheby’s and Mirabaud Mercier, and is expected to fetch between 5 and 8 million euro. The owner wishes to remain anonymous.

Entitled ‘Scène de Rue à  Montmartre’ (‘A street scene in Montmartre’) painted by Van Gogh in 1887 while he was visiting his brother Theo in Paris, the painting stayed for about a century in a French family’ private collection. It depicts a man and woman strolling arm in arm past children playing, with a fence and a windmill in the background.

Auctioneers say that the painting had been seen in catalogues, but had never been on public display. It is one of the very few paintings from Van Gogh’s Montmartre period that was in private hands.

If you want to see the painting and you live in The Netherlands, you would need to make an appointment with Sotheby’s in Amsterdam on 1, 2 and 3 March because after that the painting is off to London and Paris.

(Links: nu.nl, Image: swissinfo.ch)

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March 11, 2020

Van Gogh goes for 15 million euro in Maastricht

Filed under: Art,History by Orangemaster @ 4:36 pm

‘Peasant woman in front of a farmhouse’ (‘Paysanne devant une chaumière’ in French), an 1885 work by Vincent van Gogh that was bought back in the 1960s in the UK for about 5 euro, just sold for 15 million euro at the world’s premier art fair TEFAF in Maastricht, Limburg.

It’s one of those stories were someone had left the painting in a cellar for years until a local antique merchant bought it at an auction for next to nothing. One year later, the painting was sold to a journalist for about 53 euro; he showed it the Tate Gallery director and it was deemed to be a Van Gogh. The journalist then auctioned it off in 1970 at Sotheby’s in New York City where it fetched USD 110.000 (97.455 euro).

In 2001 the work was sold for the last time at Sotheby’s for 1.5 million euro. Today, at 15 million euro, it’s the most expensive artwork ever sold at the TEFAF, although not all sales at the annual event are made public.

(Link: ad.nl, image artnet.com)

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April 3, 2019

Van Gogh’s revolver under the hammer in Paris

Filed under: Art,History by Orangemaster @ 3:32 pm

It has been announced today in Paris that the revolver with which Vincent Van Gogh is believed to have shot himself will be auctioned off on June 19. Auction Art calls it “the most famous weapon in the history of art”, the 7 mm Lefaucheux revolver is expected to fetch upwards of 60,000 euro when it is sold on June 19.

“Discovered by a farmer in 1965 in the same field where the troubled Dutch painter is thought to have fatally wounded himself 75 years before, the gun has already been exhibited at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.”

Experts say that Van Gogh shot himself near the village of Auvers-sur-Oise north of Paris where he spent the last few months of his life in 1890. The revolver belonged to the owner of the inn where he was staying. Van Gogh died 36 hours after he wounded himself in the inn and in the dark.

There are still many discussions about whether he actually shot himself or that maybe a local boy shot him inadvertently.

(Link: phys.org)

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March 23, 2019

Van Gogh in American museum finally authenticated

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 11:43 am

Dutch experts from Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum have finally declared that the painting ‘Vase with Poppies’ (‘Vaas met klaprozen’) is a real Vincent van Gogh. The painting, which currently hangs in the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, USA, was painted by the Dutch artist in 1886, just after he moved to Paris.

The painting has been part of the American museum’s collection since 1957, and when a prominent expert in 1990 starting questioning its authenticity, the museum put it in storage. Nowadays, using a Macro-X-ray Fluorescence (MA-XRF) scanner to analyse the painting like they did with Vermeer’s ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ last year, the underpainting revealed what looked like a self-portrait, which strengthened its authenticity.

The Wadsworth Atheneum now officially has two Van Goghs in its collection. The other is a self-portrait painted in 1887.

Why does it take so long to authenticate a painting? Well, MA-XRF scanners cost in the hundreds of thousands of euro, which means few museums own them – they usually have to borrow one. Besides getting your hands on such a scanner, the time it takes to scan and proper analyse the findings means the painting is out of view for a while and that your staff is busy doing that instead of other things.

(Links and image: gelderlander.nl, apnews.com)

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July 21, 2018

Van Gogh house can stay for autistic son

Filed under: Art,General,Health by Orangemaster @ 1:40 pm

A couple in Florida has painted the outside of their entire house as a huge mural of Vincent Van Gogh’s ‘The Starry Night’ for their autistic son, and has just just won an almost year-long battle with the city to keep it that way.

The commissioned painting works as a beacon for their adult son who has problems communicating and occasionally wanders away from home. By making their house a landmark, which their son refers to as T’he Starry Night house’, he can tell people which house he’s talking about when he gets lost and people will know where it is.

When the mural was started, the city told them it was considered graffiti if the wall didn’t match the house, so they went the whole hog and painted the entire outside of the house. Then, they got fined 10,000 USD (about 8,528 euro) for doing so. While the city said the house was a distraction and improper, the coupled expressed their constitutional right to free expression and won.

Parents are ready to fight for their children under normal circumstances, but if your kid also has a developmental disorder like autism, you’re probably going to fight anybody who tries to make your life more difficult. The city gave the family $15,000 USD (about 12,793 euro) and an apology, which was a big deal for this family who grew up in socialist Poland.

(Link and photo: cbc.ca)

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June 6, 2018

Van Gogh fetches upwards of 7 million euro

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 8:00 am

On June 4, an early painting of Vincent van Gogh entitled ‘Women Mending Nets in the Dunes’ from 1882 fetched 7.1 million euro at Paris’ Artcurial auction house, an amount that was much more than expected. According to Reuters, it was expected to fetch between 3-5 million euro, an amount many felt was excessive.

The oil painting from Van Gogh’s The Hague period has been hanging in the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam for the past eight years. It was sold, as it was on loan from a private collector.

(Links: nu.nl, Photo: reuters.com)

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March 7, 2018

Van Gogh on sale for 3.5 million euro

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 6:01 pm

van-gogh-harvest-detail

A still life by Vincent van Gogh will be for sale at The European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF) in Maastricht, a painting made in 1885 when Van Gogh lived in Nuenen, Noord-Brabant, which features bottles and cowrie shells. Since 1968, the painting has been owned by a private individual.

This will also be the second time that a Van Gogh painting is up for sale at TEFAF. The first time it was a townscape that changed hands for 1.4 million euro.

(Link: omroepbrabant.nl, Image: extreme close-up of The Harvest via Van Gogh Museum)

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November 9, 2017

Grasshopper clings to Van Gogh painting for 128 years

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 3:44 pm

olive

A conservator has discovered that Vincent van Gogh’s painting ‘Olive Trees’ has more to it than meets the eye. Parts of the thorax and abdomen of a grasshopper were preserved in the painting for 128 years, according to the Kansas City Star newspaper, reporting on the painting exhibited at the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, Missouri in the United States.

The grasshopper was spotted under magnification during research on French paintings at the museum and cannot be seen with the naked eye. Since Van Gogh worked outdoors a lot, it’s not unlikely for an insect to drop dead and end up on a canvas.

And it will not be removed.

(Link and photo: boingboing.net)

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August 4, 2017

Bees also like paintings of flowers

Filed under: Animals by Orangemaster @ 11:16 pm

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A while back, we wrote about cats liking boxes drawn on the floor, but this time it’s about bees liking paintings of sunflowers, like the world famous one from Vincent van Gogh.

“Flower colours have evolved over 100 million years to address the colour vision of their bee pollinators.” With this in mind, investigators Professor Lars Chittka and Julian Walker of Queen Mary College, University of London, decided to investigate whether bees might also be attracted to paintings of flowers, for example (a copy of) Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’.

The whole study can be found here. According to the study, Van Gogh scored the best with the bees, apparently stimulating the bees’ green receptors most strongly, the receptors that spot flowers from afar.

(Link and photo www.improbable.com)

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November 2, 2016

Searching for the bed from a Van Gogh painting

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 10:08 pm

The city of Boxmeer, Noord-Brabant is willing to offer a nice breakfast in bed for anyone who can lead them to or tell them about the yellow bed that Vincent van Gogh painted in his painting ‘The Bedroom’ from 1888.

English art historian Martin Bailey wrote in his new book ‘Studio of the South: Van Gogh in Provence’ that the yellow bed had been traced to a descendant who donated it to a community near Arnhem after the city’s liberation in 1945.

The mayor of Boxmeer is asking his citizens to see if they can find the bed in question. And if they do find it in Boxmeer, he’ll serve the breakfast himself.

Van Gogh originally purchased the bed in September 1888, along with a guest bed for 150 francs each, preceding the arrival of fellow artist Paul Gauguin for a stay with him at the Yellow House in Arles, France. He produced ‘The Bedroom’ as a kind of proud document of his first home. After his suicide in 1890, the bed eventually passed to his brother’s widow Jo, who brought the bed back to Holland to utilise in a small guest house she established.

In February the Art Institute of Chicago had recreated Van Gogh’s The Bedroom for an exhibition.

(Links: www.telegraaf.nl, www.independent.co.uk)

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