UNITED STATES: La Mousmé, a portrait from Vincent Van Gogh’s final years will be auctioned at Christie’s on March 1. The drawing is a part of a collection sale dubbed as “A Family Collection: Works on Paper, Van Gogh to Freud”. The event will take place next month in New York. While creating this work, Van Gogh was believed to be residing in Arles, France.
Van Gogh’s iconic painting is expected to fetch around $10 million in the auction. The portrait has been touched on the tip by numerous hands. Originally, the drawing was given as a gift by the artist to John Russel, an Australian painter. It remained as one of his possessions until 1920 after which it traveled along with anonymous sales. La Mousmé is the last work among the 12 that were gifted to John Russel, the rest constitute 9 landscapes and 2 portraits. In 1956, the drawing was restituted to the Hirschland family. Finally, it was kept in a private collection in the United Kingdom after being acquired in 1983.
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“The work is incredibly rare. When I saw it in the flesh for the first time, I was very moved,” Christie’s co-head of 20th and 21st-century art department, Giovanna Bertazzoni said. He also added that pieces of this quality typically end up in museums.
A specialist that happened to examine the portrait made by Van Gogh, said that the portrait somehow had engraved styles that were imported from Japan in 19th-century France.
Another painting that Gogh completed of the same sitter is currently dwelling in the National Gallery of Art. It is reported that the inspiration came to Van Gogh from Pierre Loti’s 1887 novel Madame Chrysanthème.
The anticipated bidding will start 10 days from now. Meanwhile, the registrations will close in 9 days.
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