[wagglebee]

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.

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.

[kabumpo]

You have a point re photos of paintings.

[RegulatorCountry]

A photo or even a high quality reproduction does pale in comparison to viewing a work in person, that's true. It's beginning to be apparent that what prompted my initial reaction to the painting, the somber colors, the bleak subject matter and the overall down mood was intentional on the part of Gauguin. That shifts the equation a bit in favor of a higher valuation.

It's just very surprisingly out of character. He knew Van Gogh quite well, painted portraits of him and was clearly very profoundly affected. That this comes from his Tahitian period makes it even more of an outlier, these typically are a riot of color.

I tend to associate Gauguin with paintings such as this, which is Les Alyscamps Arles: