All of Vincent Van Gogh’s works have a history, but it is special and could become this Thursday November 11 the most expensive of the Dutch painter. Watercolor “Stacks of wheat” painted in 1888 in Arles is on auction in New York, a sale that will take place during The Cox Collection: The Story of Impressionism, organized by the Christie’s house. “Stacks of wheat” is estimated between 20 and 30 million dollars, or between 17.2 million and 25.9 million euros. If it is awarded in this range, the painting could thus become the most expensive work of the artist, in front of The Harvest in Provence, sold for $ 14.6 million in 1997 as well as the oil Undergrowth, sold for 26 million, two years earlier, and even though the sale is even at the low end of its estimate.
A work stolen by the Nazis
The sale is eagerly awaited because it will settle a heavy legal dispute between two Jewish families and the heirs of its last American owner, Edwin Cox, died in 2020. The watercolor was done in June 1888, in Arles, preparatory study in oil on canvas Stacks of wheat in Provence, painted a week later. It was first offered by Van Gogh to his brother Theo. The latter’s widow separated in favor of the Parisian collector Gustave Fayet in 1907, then of a Berlin industrialist, Max Meirowsky, six years later. But, under the threat of the Nazi regime, the Jewish collector was forced to flee Germany in 1938 for Amsterdam. He entrusts the canvas to a German art dealer who immediately resells it to Alexandrine de Rotschild, from the famous family of Jewish bankers, settled in Paris. Alexandrine de Rotschild fled in turn to Switzerland when war broke out in 1939. Edwin Cox, the American businessman and collector, bought it in 1979. He was therefore the last owner.
Painted during the last part of Van Gogh’s life in Arles
It was in Arles in February 1888 that drawing came to the fore in Van Gogh’s work. He then totally revolutionized the practice, shifting it from its traditional role of preparatory or initial part of the creative process, to become an independent means of expression. He developed a new graphic style, strongly inspired by Japanese woodblock print art : ” I would like to make pen drawings, but colored in flat areas like Japanese prints », He wrote to his brother Theo in May 1888.
The Wheat Stacks belong to this series of works which mix watercolor and gouache and in which we find rural scenes. Christie’s specialists have called it a “Masterpiece”.