Vincent van Gogh’s spectacular landscape highlights Christie’s New York sale 13 May

 

Property from an Important Private European Collection VINCENT VAN GOGH (1853-1890)

Le pont de Trinquetaille

oil on canvas

25½ x 31¾ in. (65 x 81 cm.)

Painted in Arles circa 17 June 1888. $25,000,000-35,000,000

Christie’s will present Vincent van Gogh’s spectacular landscape Le pont de Trinquetaille as a highlight of the 20th Century Evening Sale at Christie’s New York on 13 May ($25,000,000-35,000,000). Painted during Van Gogh’s pivotal fifteen-month stay in Arles, situated on the Rhône River in the Provence region of Southern France, Le pont de Trinquetaille with its electric color palette and expressive brushwork is emblematic of the artist’s mature period.

Inspired by the intense Provençal light while living amidst the rural French landscape, Van Gogh’s work underwent a radical transformation as he produced one modern masterpiece after another. Painted in the summer of 1888, Le pont de Trinquetaille dates from this extraordinary period of creativity. Depicting the Rhône from Arles, it encapsulates the experimentation of this seminal period. As with the greatest of Van Gogh’s Arles landscapes, color takes on a force of its own within this radically constructed composition.

This period marks not only a central turning point in the artist’s life, but in modern art as a whole. Van Gogh’s groundbreaking use of autonomous color in his subjective vision of nature and the landscape would come to alter the course of painting throughout the following century, influencing artists from Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Pablo Picasso to Willem de Kooning and Francis Bacon.

Christie’s Senior International Director, Impressionist and Modern Art Jay Vincze said, “It is a huge honor to present this spectacular work by Vincent Van Gogh to the market. Works of this scale and importance are incredibly rare and everything about it, from the vibrant, ‘absinthe’ colour of the sky and the highly structured composition to the thick and expressive brushwork of the water speaks of an artist at the very height of his creative powers.”

The vivid yellow-green shade of the river and sky lend the painting an eerie, unearthly beauty, casting the figures that populate the scene into dark, silhouetted shadow. As well as these bold planes of flattened color, the plunging perspective and clear distinction between the foreground and background in this scene were likely inspired by the Japanese prints that Van Gogh greatly admired at this time.

With an esteemed provenance, Le pont de Trinquetaille was included in a host of important and influential exhibitions soon after its creation. It  was exhibited in cities across Germany, featured in many of the shows visited by the nascent generation of German Expressionists, on whom Van Gogh’s work had a decisive impact.