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Vincent van Gogh<\/a>, \u201cThe Red Vineyard,\u201d 1888. (Public domain)<\/p>\n In 2024, an 1887 painting<\/a> by Vincent van Gogh<\/a> snagged one of the year\u2019s highest prices at auction<\/a>, clocking in at $33.19 million. At Christie\u2019s New York, in 2022, Orchard with Cypresses sold for an astounding $117 million, making it one of the 15 most expensive<\/a> artworks ever sold at auction. Throughout the past century, the post-Impressionist master has achieved a meteoric rise to fame as a blue-chip artist, but when he was alive, he wasn\u2019t nearly as lucky.<\/p>\n By the time he died in 1890, at the age of 37, van Gogh had produced about 2,100 artworks, and yet he\u2019s known to have sold only one of them during his lifetime: The Red Vineyard. As its title suggests, the painting depicts a vineyard doused in a dramatic color palette, with reds, oranges, and yellows exploding across the canvas. He\u2019d discovered the scene in Arles during an afternoon walk with fellow artist Paul Gauguin<\/a> on October 28, 1888, describing what he saw in a letter to his brother, Theo, as \u201ccompletely red like red wine.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIn the distance it became yellow, and then a green sky with a sun, fields violet and sparkling yellow here and there after the rain in which the setting sun was reflected,\u201d van Gogh added in his note.<\/p>\n Rather than painting en plein air, van Gogh returned to his studio and recreated the vineyard from memory, layering the landscape with his thick brushstrokes and expressive forms. In the sky is an enormous sun, its rays beaming down upon the fiery earth, and the turquoise river snaking through the composition\u2019s right side. With his confident hand, the painting radiates the essence of fall, serving as one of his more saturated canvases.<\/p>\n Once The Red Vineyard was completed, the artist sent it to Theo in Paris, who described it as \u201cvery beautiful\u201d and hung it up in his apartment. After a few months, van Gogh received an invitation to participate in the 1890 Les XX exhibition in Brussels, where he decided to showcase the 1888 painting and subsequently asked his brother to send it back for the occasion. There, he sold it for 400 francs to Belgian painter and collector Anna Boch, the wife of Eug\u00e8ne Boch, another Impressionist painter and friend of van Gogh. In a letter to Theo, van Gogh later confessed that he felt embarrassed about having sold Boch the painting at sticker price, when she should\u2019ve received a friend\u2019s discount.<\/p>\n The story of The Red Vineyard doesn\u2019t end with the Boch family. In 1909, the painting was bought by Ivan Morosov, a Moscow collector and textile factory owner, at the price of 30,000 francs. A year after the Russian Revolution, in 1918, Morosov\u2019s collection was nationalized by the Bolsheviks and eventually transferred to Moscow\u2019s Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in 1948. Since then, The Red Vineyard has been exhibited globally, including in 2022<\/a> at Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris.<\/p>\n Although van Gogh began receiving critical attention during the last year of his life<\/a>, he didn\u2019t live to witness the intensity of his eventual commercial success. Still, Anna Boch\u2014and van Gogh\u2019s sister-in-law<\/a>\u2014must\u2019ve had a hunch about his genius, even before his death.\n<\/p>\n Despite being commercially successful today, Vincent van Gogh wasn\u2019t as lucky during his lifetime: he is known to have only officially sold one painting, titled The Red Vineyard, from 1888. Self-portrait by Vincent van Gogh, 1887. (Public domain)<\/p>\n The painting was sold to Anna Boch during the 1890 Les XX exhibition in Brussels for 400 francs. Portrait of Anna Boch by Th\u00e9o van Rysselberghe, ca. 1889. (Public domain)<\/p>\n Sources: How did the only painting sold by Van Gogh in his lifetime end up in Russia?<\/a>; Vincent van Gogh (1853\u20131890)<\/a>; Discover the Only Painting Van Gogh Ever Sold During His Lifetime<\/a> Van Gogh\u2019s \u201cThe Starry Night\u201d Hides Atmospheric Physics<\/a><\/p>\n
\n![\"Self-portrait](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Vincent-van-Gogh-Red-Vineyard-2.jpg\")
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