The Van Gogh hidden for 120 years goes to auction for one and a half million pounds
[ad_1]
An almost unknown work by Vincent Van Gogh (1858-1890), which remained hidden in a private collection for 120 years, will go up for auction on Tuesday 28 February in London at Christie’s: it is the «Head of a Woman (Gordina de Groot)» , painted March-April 1885, proposed with an estimate of between £1 and £2 million.
In the period in which he painted “heads of the people”, the Dutch painter had executed dozens of paintings of unnamed peasant men and women in the village of Nuenen, but the only character he mentioned in letters to his brother Theo is Gordina de Groot (1855- 1927), who was about to turn 30.
Gordina was also depicted in Van Gogh’s first early masterpiece, The Potato Eaters. Van Gogh’s relations with the woman caused scandal in the village: Gordina was in fact pregnant and someone came to think that her child was by the same painter. The child’s birth certificate does not state the father’s name. Who was she? It could not be established. The painter told his brother that he was a cousin of Gordina. Probably, however, the woman was not indifferent to Vincent. In the description of the painting in Christie’s catalog we read that «although Van Gogh vehemently denied these claims, the present work nevertheless suggests a particular tenderness between the artist and the model, evident in the strength of her gaze».
«Head of a Woman» is one of 40 paintings that the painter left behind when he left for Antwerp in the autumn of 1885. They were all purchased for one guilder in 1902 from an antique dealer in Breda, only to be resold a year later to a Rotterdam dealer , Christiaan Oldenzeel. From him, the portrait of Gordina was bought in 1903 by a banker from The Hague, Henri Daniel Pierson. The painting has remained in the family collection ever since. In addition to the portrait, which will be auctioned, two other portraits of Gordina are known, one kept in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and the other in the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh: in both paintings the woman is depicted wearing a cap white.
[ad_2]
Source link
