An 1890 Vincent van Gogh portrait sold for $40.3-million (U.S.) on Tuesday night at Christie's International in New York, the fourth-highest price at auction for the Dutch master.
L'Arlesienne, Madame Ginoux, one of six known van Gogh portraits of a French café owner, was expected to sell for more than $40-million. There were two bidders for the painting. The winner was an unidentified telephone bidder who topped an international art dealer. The price includes commission.
"In order to spend $40-million, everything has to be lined up," Acquavella Galleries Director Michael Findlay said earlier on Tuesday. "At auction, that can be fuelled by competition."
Until this week, just three of van Gogh's paintings had sold at auction for more than $25-million. Last fall, hedge-fund manager Steven Cohen reportedly bought an 1890 van Gogh portrait of a peasant and a Gauguin from casino mogul Steve Wynn for more than $100-million.
Tuesday's sale was the first of four major New York auctions at Christie's and Sotheby's Holdings Inc. within two weeks. The combined high total for all sales is $847.6-million. Last night and Tuesday, the focus was Impressionist and Modern art from the late 19th century to the first half of the 20th century. The twice-annual sales are regarded as a barometer of the art market.
Among Picassos on the block Tuesday, the 1902 blue-period Portrait of Germaine is a red-lipped likeness of a seductress who slept with the artist, and several of his friends, driving one unrequited lover to suicide. It got $18.6-million.
Picasso's Le Repos, painted 30 years later, splays an abstracted female figure across a large canvas. It went for $34.7-million, far above the initial $20-million value given by the auction house.
The record for a van Gogh remains $82.5-million, paid at Christie's New York in 1990 for Portrait of Dr. Gachet, which was painted the same year as Madame Ginoux. Both paintings capture their world-weary subjects seated at tables, elbows up, moods down.
Madame Ginoux ran the Café de la Gare in Arles, a favoured watering hole of van Gogh and Paul Gauguin, who both used her as a model in 1888. The two artists worked together in Arles that year. Van Gogh's famous Night Café, in blazing reds and yellows, was set in Madame Ginoux's all-night establishment.
Gauguin left Arles after van Gogh, plagued by mental illness, chopped off part of his ear. Van Gogh went to a mental asylum where he made five portraits of Madame Ginoux, whose bony hands and pallid complexion reflect her own health problems. Those versions are based on an 1888 portrait drawing by Gauguin and a homage to the artist.
Van Gogh painted seven portraits of Ginoux in all. One is lost and the others are in museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome.
Racked by mental illness, 37-year-old van Gogh killed himself five months after finishing the portrait of Madame Ginoux bought on Tuesday night. The painting went to his brother, art dealer Theo van Gogh, and eventually was sold to a Swiss dealer who sold it to Harry and Ruth Bakwin, American collectors on a summertime art-buying spree across Europe in 1928.
Ruth Bakwin was heir to two Chicago meat-packing fortunes, Armour and Swift, and bought Cézannes, van Goghs and other Post-Impressionist paintings at a time when they were still considered adventurous, if not downright dangerous. Their eldest son, Edward Bakwin, inherited the painting and was the Christie's seller.