A watercolor painting by Dutch Impressionist master Vincent van Gogh was recently sold at an auction in New York for $35.9 million, setting a record for van Gogh's watercolor paintings. It is reported that the painting was looted from the Rothschilds by the German Nazis who occupied France during World War II.
Van Gogh's 1888 work The Wheat Pile.
Christie's reportedly said the 1888 work Mueles de ble was auctioned by an unnamed buyer for a much higher price than its pre-sale estimate of $20 to $30 million. The painting was last exhibited in Amsterdam in 1905.
The Wheat Pile depicts a rural scene in Al, France, where Van Gogh lived for more than a year in the 1880s. The work shows farmers harvesting wheat in provencal farmland, with tall golden haystacks and a cluster of farmhouses set off by a bright blue sky.
Unlike Van Gogh's most famous works, the painting was painted on paper with watercolors, gouache, pens and ink.
At auction, another of Van Gogh's paintings fetched a hefty $81 million.
The auctioned "Wheat Pile" and two other van Gogh paintings originally belonged to the collection of oil magnate Edwin Lohrich Cox, and the two paintings sold for $81 million and $46 million, respectively.
Owned by his brother Theo van Gogh after van Gogh's suicide, Wheat Pile was bought in 1913 by the German industrialist and collector Max Merovsky.
Merovsky has an extensive collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works, including Van Gogh's Portrait of Camille Ruhring (1888), now in the São Paulo Museum of Art.
When the Jewish collector was hiding from the Nazis in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, he entrusted the Wheat Heap to paul Gropp, a German art merchant in Paris.
In 1938, as the persecution of Jews in France began to escalate, Merovsky sold it. In 1940, it was collected by Alexandre de Rothschild, a member of the French branch of the wealthy Jewish bank family.
Alexander de Rothschild was an admirer of Van Gogh.
She was also an admirer of Van Gogh, owning The Sunflower House (1887), which is now purchased by another private collector.
During World War II, during the German Nazi occupation of France, the Wheat Heap was "confiscated" by the Germans, and Alexander de Rothschild fled to Switzerland.
After the war, Alexandre de Rothschild tried unsuccessfully to recover the painting, as its whereabouts are unknown.
Oil tycoon Edwin Lohridge Cox.
In the late 1970s, oil magnate Edwin Lohridge Cox bought the painting from the Wilsonstein Gallery in New York. Cox hung the painting in the living room of his mansion in Dallas.
Cox's ownership of the painting, with the exception of his closest friend, was kept secret until his death last year.
After Merovsky's heirs and the Rothschilds settled, Christie's bought The Wheat Heap.
Van Gogh self-portrait.
Van Gogh is considered one of the greatest and most influential painters in the art world, although he did not see much commercial success during his lifetime.
Text/Nandu reporter Chen Lin