PARIS: One of the few paintings by Vincent Van Gogh still in private hands sold for more than 13 million euros at auction on Thursday, Sotheby’s said.
“Street Scene in Montmartre” — on public display for the first time since its creation in 1887, after a century in the same collection — fetched 13.09 million euros ($15.4 million), the auction house said.
At well above the estimate of 5-8 million euros, the sale price was a record for the artist in France, it added.
The painting was the highlight of an auction of 33 works from masters including Degas, Magritte, Modigliani, Klee, Rodin and his muse Camille Claudel sold in an auction live-streamed by Sotheby’s in Paris.
The painting was reoffered at the end of the sale in Paris, after the auction house scrapped its initial sale earlier in the afternoon — where it fetched a slightly higher sale price — due to problems with online bidding.
Other highlights included the sale of a recently restored work by Camille Pissarro, “La Recolte des pois”, which fetched 3.38 million euros. It had been originally commissioned by Van Gogh’s brother, Theo. Francis Picabia’s “La Corrida” meanwhile fetched 3.15 million euros.
The 1887 Van Gogh, one of more than 200 paintings produced by the Dutch post-Impressionist master during two years spent in Paris, portrays one of the windmills that dotted Montmartre when it was just a village on the northern outskirts of the capital.
A couple stroll and two children play in front of a wooden fence and leafless trees depicted in the characteristic tan and brown tones of his “Dutch palette”, punctuated by a bright red flag blowing above the mill.
The period marked a turning point in Van Gogh’s career as he began exploring expressionist techniques and new uses of colour in the final years of his life, before his suicide in 1890 at the age of 37. It is not considered one of his best works.
The last Van Gogh sold at a public auction, “Labourer in a Field” from 1889, went for $81 million at a New York sale in 2017. — AFP
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