Vincent van Gogh’s profound humanity, his gift of speaking directly to each and every one of us, continues to reverberate through the ages. A hundred years ago the Expressionists created a passionate, tortured van Gogh, whose vibrant paintings were understood as outpourings of uncontrolled emotion.
Paintings by Vincent van Gogh will go to the block (andranno all'asta) next month at Sotheby's New York, with three canvases (tele) expected to bring as much as $100 million among them.
Vincent Van Gogh's L'Allée des Alyscamps (1888) will be offered at Sotheby's on May 5 and is expected to achieve in excess of $40 million.
Tagged at $40 million is Van Gogh's L'Allée des Alyscamps, painted in 1888, when the artist and his then close friend Paul Gauguin were in the South of France and aimed at creating a "studio of the south."
The Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum, Arles, at Night,
Vincent was enthusiastic about The Cafe Terrace and wrote to his sister Wil:
In point of fact I was interrupted these days by my toiling on a new picture representing the outside of a night cafe. On the terrace there are tiny figures of people drinking. An enormous yellow lantern sheds its light on the terrace, the house and the sidewalk, and even causes a certain brightness on the pavement of the street, which takes a pinkish violet tone. The fronts of the houses in a street stretching away under a blue sky spangled with stars are dark blue or violet and there is a green tree. Here you have a night picture without any black in it, done with nothing but beautiful blue and violet and green, and in these surroundings the lighted square acquires a pale sulphur and greenish citron-yellow colour. It amuses me enormously to paint the night right on the spot. They used to draw and paint the picture in the daytime . But I find satisfaction in painting things immediately.
(: 9 and 16 September 1888)
