Vincent Van Gogh’s “Street Scene in Montmartre” painting of a street scene in a Paris neighborhood will finally be shown to the public before the auction date. Van Gogh’s work will be displayed in Hong Kong, Paris, and Amsterdam before Sotheby’s auction house in Paris puts it up for sale on March 25, 2020. The painting is expected to sell at a price of between 5 and 8 million euros, or an equivalent of $6 million and $9.7 million. .
According to Sotheby’s auction house, the 1887 painting was kept for more than a century as part of a French family’s private collection and has rarely been viewed if ever.
Etienne Hellman, the Senior Director of Impressionist and Modern Art at Sotheby’s mentioned that the painting is an important piece of Van Gogh’s collection of artworks, as the artist had painted it while living with his brother Theo in Paris. Actually, Van Gogh lived in Montmartre when he moved to Paris in 1886, but later moved to southern France where stayed when he ended his life in 1890. Montmartre used to be a working-class village but later gained repute as an artistic centre. …
About the “Street Scene in Montmartre”
Van Gogh’s “Street Scene in Montmartre” was painted in 1887, three years before he committed suicide. It depicts people walking through the rural landscape of Montmartre, known to be as one of Paris’ popular historic streets.
Hellman described its colors as quite different as they had a blown-up effect which is rare since the colors in most of Van Gogh’s earlier paintings were much darker. In the painting, the Pepper Mill an iconic landmark denoting Montmartre’s history with windmills, can be seen from the street where a couple and their little girl can be seen strolling strolling in front of wooden fences.