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Hundreds Queue in Hong Kong as Sotheby’s Unveils Van Gogh’s ‘Chestnut Trees in Blossom’
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Hundreds queued in Hong Kong to view Van Gogh's Chestnut Trees in Blossom. The painting had not been publicly displayed for more than 60 years.
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Hong Kong crowds, record hopes
Hundreds of art lovers lined up outside a Hong Kong gallery to see Vincent van Gogh’s “Châtaigniers en fleurs (Chestnut Trees in Blossom),” which had been hidden from public view for more than six decades. Sotheby’s scheduled the painting for a planned auction on 18 November in New York, and Sotheby’s expected the work to sell for about $180 million (£138 million). Sotheby’s said the painting was created in May 1890 in Auvers-sur-Oise, France, during van Gogh’s final months, and the landscape shows a chestnut tree covered in blossoms with a lone man walking past three women dressed in Japanese clothing.
Scott Niichel, a vice chairman at Sotheby’s, told AFP, “It’s one of the last, most expressive and hopeful works by van Gogh in this final phase of his career,” as crowds viewed the painting during its worldwide preview. Sotheby’s said the painting went on public display in Hong Kong as part of that preview, and large crowds came to see one of the few major late works by Van Gogh still held in private hands.
Auction context and provenance
Sotheby’s ownership records said art collector Harriet Harris Jonas bought the painting in 1953, and the painting was later bought through art dealer Wildenstein in 1975 by Carlos Pedro Blaquier and his wife, Nelly Arrieta de Blaquier. Sotheby’s said the painting has remained in the Blaquier family collection ever since, and Sotheby’s named the wider holding the “Legendary” Blaquier-Arrieta Collection. Simon Shaw, a senior adviser at Sotheby’s, described the collection’s historical importance in a statement, saying, “It feels like a small museum, a miniature Musée d’Orsay, now opening its doors for the very first time.”
Sotheby’s said the entire collection is expected to raise more than $450 million when it goes up for auction in November, and the collection includes works by Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Camille Pissarro. Sotheby’s said the painting is one of just eight landscapes van Gogh created in Auvers-sur-Oise that remains in private hands, while the others are held by major museums around the world.
Van Gogh’s final chapter
Sotheby’s said van Gogh painted “Chestnut Trees in Blossom” in May 1890 in Auvers-sur-Oise, and the painting is from the last two months of his life. Van Gogh rented a small attic room above a café for three and a half francs per night and made daily trips into the countryside to paint, and he frequently visited Paul Gachet, a local doctor and art collector who encouraged him to continue painting. Sotheby’s said van Gogh described his inspiration as “beautiful greenery in abundance” and felt that “the desire to work will devour me and make me insensible to everything else and in a good mood,” according to a statement from Sotheby’s.
“Van Gogh took heed of Gachet’s advice and painted prolifically again.”
Van Gogh shot himself in the chest two months into his stay in Auvers-sur-Oise, and he succumbed to his injury two days later on July 29, 1890, at 37 years old. Van Gogh wrote, “Ah well, I risk my life for my own work and my reason has half foundered in it,” in an unfinished letter addressed to his brother, Theo, which he was carrying with him on the day of the shooting.