Painted by Paul Gauguin in 1901 in Tahiti, the painting is expected to fetch between £7 million to £10 million
Posted on 01/30/2011 4:36:10 PM PST by SeekAndFind
A still life of sunflowers by Paul Gauguin, painted in tribute to his friend Vincent Van Gogh, is expected to fetch up to £10 million at auction.
Gauguin painted the work, Nature morte à L'Espérance, in 1901 while he was living in Tahiti. It is the highlight of an Impressionist and Modern Art sale at Christie's in London on February 9.
The depiction of sunflowers was a fitting tribute to Van Gogh and a reference to the months in 1888 when the two artists shared a home, a period that ended in tragedy. The pair lived together in Arles, France, spending their days at work in what was known as the Yellow House. At the time, both were poor and unknown, although Gauguin was slowly developing a name for himself.
It was there that Van Gogh produced his own sunflower paintings and he decorated Gauguin's bedroom walls with them. However, his drinking and mental instability led their friendship to unravel. "Between two such beings as he and I, the one a perfect volcano, the other boiling inwardly, some sort of struggle was preparing," Gauguin wrote.
In the grip of manic depression, Van Gogh sliced off part of his left ear on December 23. Gauguin left Arles on Christmas Day and the two never saw each other again. Van Gogh died in 1890.
When Gauguin moved to Tahiti, he wrote to a friend back in France asking him to send sunflower seeds so that he could recreate a little corner of France in the South Seas. The painting was done "doubtless in part as a tribute to his friend and fellow artistic pioneer Vincent Van Gogh, who had died just over a decade earlier", a Christie's spokesman said.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Well, I’ve studied art history, have a BFA and have critiqued numerous artists and their work before, so it’s surprising to me that this apparently highly noteworthy Gauguin leaves me cold. The color palette is murky and uninspired, composition is not particularly compelling and the subject matter is not just trite but somehow oddly depressing.
To think that this brown smudge of dead sunflowers and childish doodles of human figures is to fetch ten million pounds is just amazing to me, I really don’t see it. They have to be buying the provenance and the name(s), and not the beauty of the work. That, or the JPEG absolutely does not do it justice at all.
Or maybe I’m just feeling curmudgeonly, presuming to tackle a Gauguin and panning it.
/artsnob off, lol
I agree with you 100%.
Nice to have company, I figured I’d get flamed, lol.
I don’t have any art degrees but I have painted for 20 years and taken classes and workshops and I completely agree with you on this Gauguin. It has got to be one of the ugliest paintings I have seen in a while. I am not crazy about Gauguin’s work generally, I think he was celebrated for his life style more than anything.
I have a BA in Art History and concur with your assessment. This is by far one of the weakest and least dynamic work of Gauguin’s that I’ve ever seen. Granted, I have little interest in much 19th century stuff after the Pre-Raphaelites to begin with, but at least a lot of late-impressionist to post-impressionist stuff is visually interesting (especially Seurat :-). This looks like the canvas was dropped in a mud puddle.
+(Still+Life,+Vase+with+Fifteen+Sunflowers).jpg)
My thinking on this is twofold.
On the one hand, I think that a lot of the value is because the painting is Gauguin's tribute to van Gogh.
On the other hand, while I agree that this isn't anywhere near as praiseworthy as much of Gauguin's other works, it's also been my amateur opinion that pictures of Impressionist art never even come close to capturing the beauty of the original.
Chance one has to take. As person in the arts, it’s sometimes frustrating and a challenge to communicate about art related themes in a Conservative forum. Sometimes I think it might be easier to convert leftists to our side than to have the average Conservative develop an aesthetic sensibility.
Funny but Lust for Live (movie) is on right now as we speak. Vincent: Kirk Douglas and Paul Gauguin: Anthony Quinn. Great acting and many wonderful paintings of their works.
You have a point re photos of paintings.
change to : Lust For Life
Great collection at the Art Institute in Chicago.
I wondered how you could make any determination sight unseen. I would suspect the innate limitations of the Internet above all else. El Greco doesn't have a great impact on a webpage either.
Have you ever seen it?
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