Why did Van Gogh fail to promote his work?

One of many key points of the Van Gogh legend is that he couldn’t promote his artwork: he was a solitary genius, shunned by the inventive institution. However this isn’t totally true. Within the final couple of years of his life he was starting to win recognition, no less than among the many avant-garde.

It’s typically mentioned that Van Gogh offered a single portray, with just one recognized work going to a purchaser. In March 1890 the Belgian artist Anna Boch purchased The Purple Winery (November 1888) at an exhibition in Brussels.

However Van Gogh could properly have had a couple of extra gross sales. There’s tantalising proof that one among his self-portraits was purchased by the London sellers Arthur Sulley and William Lawrie. This revelation is available in a letter from Vincent’s brother Theo in October 1888, though the self-portrait is now misplaced.

Early in Vincent’s inventive profession, whereas residing along with his mother and father in 1884 within the village of Nuenen, he was commissioned to color six landscapes for the eating room of a retired goldsmith, Antoon Hermans. Issues developed, and Hermans ended up giving him solely 25 guilders (then round £2), which hardly coated his paint.

Two or three years later, in Paris, Vincent painted a portrait of a pal of his paint vendor Père Julien Tanguy. He acquired 20 francs (then round £1). Though not conclusively recognized, that is regarded as a portrait which was final recorded in 1927 and is thought solely from a black-and-white {photograph}.

On one other event in Paris, Vincent exchanged a nonetheless lifetime of smoked herrings for a carpet (a deal later recorded in correspondence along with his brother Theo in March 1889).

In October 1888 Vincent referred in one other letter to Theo that “a examine”, presumably an oil portray, had been purchased by the Parisian seller Athanase Bague.

The ultimate proof of additional gross sales is a condolence letter despatched by Vincent’s aunt Cornelia van Gogh-Carbentus. She wrote to Theo in August 1890 that it should have been satisfying that his brother had succeeded in “promoting a portray and actually greater than as soon as”. So The Purple Winery was not fairly the one one.

However even when Van Gogh managed to promote a handful or two of his work, this nonetheless represents a minute proportion of the just about 1,000 that he accomplished. Regardless of encouragement from his avant-garde colleagues, most individuals merely rejected his work.

However what’s astonishing, and has acquired surprisingly little consideration, is the value of The Purple Winery. It was purchased by Anna Boch, sister of his pal Eugène Boch, for 400 francs (then round £16 or in right this moment’s cash round £500). On the time Vincent complained, surprisingly, to his mom that the value “isn’t a lot”. Maybe this informal comment could have been Vincent’s method of telling her that he was lastly going to make it within the artwork world.

However 400 francs was truly fairly a substantial value for an up-and-coming artist. It was the equal of two months’ residing allowance which Theo despatched Vincent in Arles – or greater than two years’ hire for the Yellow Home, the place he then lived. It was additionally a better value than some work by Gauguin, who was starting to attain success (Theo offered two Gauguins for 200 and 300 francs in 1890).

So why the excessive value for The Purple Winery? The preparations have been made privately by Theo, who was an artwork seller working for the main Boussod & Valadon gallery. We are able to solely speculate, however maybe Theo felt that it will be higher for Vincent to promote a couple of works at a excessive value moderately than begin low.

Vincent was actually lucky to have a youthful brother who was a profitable seller. It meant that Theo had the sources to supply Vincent with an everyday allowance, which enabled him to color. The 2 brothers endlessly mentioned artwork, which gave them a lot in frequent. However it additionally meant that Vincent had a brother with the contacts and data to promote his artwork, though this proved very difficult. However a begin was about to be made.

Within the final two years or so of his life Van Gogh was actually starting to win recognition. He exhibited on the progressive Société des Artistes Indépendants in Paris: three work in 1888, two in 1889 and ten in March 1890. In January 1890 he confirmed eight works on the Brussels exhibition of Les Vingt, the place The Purple Winery offered.

I’ve tracked down greater than 20 newspaper and journal articles which cited Van Gogh work in exhibition evaluations in simply the final seven months of his life, a document that may delight most struggling artists right this moment.

Though most mentions have been solely a sentence or two, the critic Albert Aurier had penned an enthusiastic six-page article within the January 1890 subject of Mercure de France. Aurier concluded that Van Gogh is each “too easy and too refined”—however he’s understood by “his brothers, the true artists”.

The tragic reality is that Vincent’s doubtlessly profitable profession was lower quick by his suicide in July 1890. Had he lived into the twentieth century, he would have in all probability develop into a profitable modern artist, along with his work being more and more wanted.

Since then, Van Gogh’s costs have continued to spiral upwards. The artist who “didn’t promote his work” is now among the many most costly.

Martin Bailey is the writer of Van Gogh’s Finale: Auvers and the Artist’s Rise to Fame (Frances Lincoln, 2021, accessible within the UK and US). He’s a number one Van Gogh specialist and investigative reporter for The Artwork Newspaper. Bailey has curated Van Gogh exhibitions on the Barbican Artwork Gallery and Compton Verney/Nationwide Gallery of Scotland. He was a co-curator of Tate Britain’s The EY Exhibition: Van Gogh and Britain (27 March-11 August 2019).

Bailey has written a variety of different bestselling books, together with The Sunflowers Are Mine: the Story of Van Gogh’s Masterpiece (Frances Lincoln 2013, accessible within the UK and US), Studio of the South: Van Gogh in Provence(Frances Lincoln 2016, accessible within the UK and US) and Starry Night time: Van Gogh on the Asylum (White Lion Publishing 2018, accessible within the UK and US). Bailey’s Dwelling with Vincent van Gogh: the Houses and Landscapes that Formed the Artist (White Lion Publishing 2019, accessible within the UK and US) gives an summary of the artist’s life. The Illustrated Provence Letters of Van Gogh has been reissued (Batsford 2021, accessible within the UK and US).

• To contact Martin Bailey, please electronic mail: [email protected]. Please observe that he doesn’t undertake authentications.

Learn extra from Martin’s Adventures with Van Gogh weblog right here.