The Red Vineyards near Arles is an oil painting by the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh, executed on a privately primed Toile de 30 piece of burlap in early November 1888. It depicts workers in a vineyard, and it is the only painting known by name that Van Gogh sold in his lifetime.[1][2]
History
The Red Vineyard was exhibited for the first time at the annual exhibition of Les XX, 1890, in Brussels, and sold for 400 francs to Belgian painter and collector Anna Boch, a member of Les XX.[3][4] Anna was the sister of Eugène Boch, another impressionist painter and a friend of Van Gogh, whose portrait Van Gogh painted (Le Peintre aux Étoiles) in Arles in autumn 1888. In a later letter to his brother Theo discussing the sale, Van Gogh admitted with some embarrassment that the Bochs paid the Les XX 1890 Exhibition sticker price, when in fact they probably should have gotten a "friend's price".[5]
^Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh. Auvers-sur-Oise, Tuesday, 24 June 1890. Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum, inv. no. b692V/1962
^France. Second half of 19th - 20th century. Painting collection (State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts ed.). Moscow: Red Square Publishers. 2005. p. 55-57.
