Van Gogh landscape goes up for auction
Vincent van Gogh - Champs pres des Alpilles - 1889
Christie's has announced that it will auction "Champs près des Alpilles" -painted by Van Gogh in Saint-Rémy in November 1889- in New York next May.
Image: Vincent van Gogh, "Champs près des Alpilles" (1889). Oil on canvas, 45 x 55 cm.
My dear Brother, I am working like one actually possessed, more than ever I am in a dumb fury of workVincent van Gogh, letter to his brother Theo, autumn 1889
"Champs près des Alpilles" is one of the many landscapes painted by Van Gogh during his stay at the Saint-Rémy sanatorium between May 1889 and May 1890. Christie's, which gives the date of creation as November 1889 (Ingo F. Walther, in his famous biography of Van Gogh, suggests December 1889), indicates that this painting is one of two canvases that the artist sent to his friend Joseph Roulin in the early 1890s.
Far from being a masterpiece, although Christie's does not hesitate to describe it as such (the use and abuse of the word "masterpiece" by auction houses deserves a thorough study), "Champs près des Alpilles" is nevertheless a good Van Gogh. Painted in the autumn of 1890, when Van Gogh created such masterly landscapes as his "Enclosed Field with Rising Sun" (private collection) or his numerous depictions of "Olive Pickers", the artist's energetic and characteristic brushstroke is perfectly appreciable in the painting.
Christie's has published a pre-sale estimate of around $45 million, which might be considered reasonable to conservative in view of the recent sale -some three months ago- of "Cabanes de bois parmi les oliviers et cyprès" (painted just a month before this work, and with very similar dimensions) for $71.3 million. The sale in May 2018 of “Vue de l'asile et de la Chapelle Saint-Paul de Mausole (Saint-Rémy)” (also painted in the autumn of 1889, and of similar dimensions to the painting to be auctioned at Christie's next May) for $39.7 million, a good result considering that the painting had already been auctioned six years earlier, may also serve as a reference.

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