Vincent Van Gogh only sold one painting during his lifetime. He was not well known as an artist while he was alive.
The painting, “The Red Vineyard,” was sold to Anna Boch, a Belgian painter and the sister of Eugène Boch, who was a friend of Van Gogh’s. The painting is now at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.
Van Gogh also gave “Sunflowers” to sister-in-law Jo Bonger as a gift. The painting was later sold by Boch’s widow for 400 francs and then passed through several hands before it came into the possession of the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen in Rotterdam in 1932.
His brother Theo was the only one who appreciated his work, and he bought all of Vincent’s paintings for his own collection.
Theo bought the painting for 400 francs, which was about $50 at that time. It was a landscape painting called “The Potato Eaters” and it was bought from a dealer in Paris when Vincent was still living in the Netherlands.
After Vincent died, Theo sold all but three of Vincent’s paintings to various museums and collectors around Europe. The three paintings that were not sold were given to Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, who became Theo’s second wife after their father died in 1891. She later donated them to the Dutch state museum when she died in 1925.
