“The Red Vineyard”
This vibrant 1888 oil on burlap painting is by the Dutch Post-Impressionist artist, Vincent Van Gogh, and is titled “The Red Vineyard”.
This is supposedly the only painting that Van Gogh formally sold during his lifetime. He informally sold and bartered some of his artwork to his friends and colleagues, as some of his artist friends definitely owned his work, but this is the only art sale of his that was officially recorded from an exhibition.
“The Red Vineyard” depicts, in brilliant colors, harvesters at a wine plantation collecting grapes in the setting sun. This was painted two weeks after fellow artist, Paul Gauguin, had moved into Van Gogh’s home in Arles, southern France, to live and work. Gauguin created a piece based on the same scene and wrote to Van Gogh’s brother, Theo, saying:
“…I have done a painting from memory of a really bewitched poor wretch in the middle of a red vineyard, and your brother, who is very generous, thinks it’s good.”
“The Red Vineyard” was painted from memory a day after Van Gogh visited the vineyard. Thanks to his many letters, we know so much about his thought process and the ideas behind many of his works. He preferred to paint from memory, and wrote:
“I’m going to set myself to work often from memory, and the canvases done from memory are always less awkward and have a more artistic look than the studies from nature, especially when I’m working in mistral conditions.”
Van Gogh described the scene he painted here in a letter to his brother, Theo:
“a red vineyard, all red like red wine. In the distance it turned to yellow and then a green sky with the sun, the earth after the rain violet, sparkling here and there where it caught the reflection of the setting sun.”
This painting was displayed at the 1890 annual exhibition of Les XX in Brussels, Belgium, and was bought by fellow artist, Anna Boch, for 400 Swiss Francs. Anna was the sister of another artist, the Impressionist, Eugène Boch, who was a friend of Van Gogh’s. The painting remained in her collection until 1906 when it was sold to a Russian businessman, Sergei Shchukin, who brought it to Russia to add to his grand art collection.
“The Red Vineyard” is currently on display at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, Russia.
For more on Vincent Van Gogh, please visit his short biography here.
You can find more artists to learn about here.
