AWAITED AUCTION OF A PAINTING BY VAN GOGH. WILL THE RECORD BREAK?

The Art World waits with bated breath for the results of the 20th/21st Century Inaugural Evening Sale at the Asian branch of Christie’s auction house in Hong Kong, which will take place at the end of September. The painting entitled “Les canots amarrés” (1887) by Vincent van Gogh, which was last seen over 30 years ago, will go under the hammer. If the work reaches the expected price, it will become the most expensive painting by a Western artist sold in Asia.

On the Christie’s auction house website, the estimated price is HKD 130-380 million, which means approximately 30-50 million US dollars, or over PLN 193 million. The previous record was held by Jean-Michel Basquiat’s 1982 painting “Warrior,” which was sold for HK$323.6 million ($41.7 million) at Christie’s 2021 auction.

The painting “Les canots amarrés” was painted by Van Gogh during his two-year stay in Paris and is a part of a series of landscapes on which he worked in 1887 in the town of Asnière, located near Paris. Christie’s states that the main work belongs to three triptychs, which were described by critics and researchers as the “artistic peak” of Van Gogh’s time at Asnières. The work has not been available to the public for 20 years and has not appeared at auction for 30 years.

– In the last years of his short life, Vincent achieved perfect artistic freedom from strictly defined colors, techniques and themes. Here, in 1887, he relishes these dearly won freedoms, loosens his brush, brightens the palette and celebrates the subtle harmonies of an exquisite summer day – Max Carter, Vice Chairman, 20th/21st Century Art at Christie’s.