Christie's Paris to Auction Rare Double-Sided Van Gogh Drawing from Final Weeks

Christie's Paris will auction a previously obscure double-sided drawing by Vincent van Gogh on April 17, with an estimated value between €100,000 and €150,000. Created in June 1890 during the artist's final months in Auvers-sur-Oise, the work features two sketches: one side depicts female pea pickers in a field, titled 'Pickers of Peas,' while the reverse shows a landscape study. The Van Gogh Museum has authenticated the piece, which includes color annotations indicating Van Gogh's intention to develop oil paintings from these drawings, though no such paintings are known to exist. The drawing has a limited exhibition history, having been shown only once in Argentina in 1959, and was previously owned by Dr. Paul Gachet, Van Gogh's physician, who acquired it around the time of the artist's death. After being sold by Gachet's son in 1954, it passed through collections in Buenos Aires and Spain before its current consignment. In related news, Van Gogh's painting 'The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in the Spring' has been reinstalled at the Groninger Museum in the Netherlands following its recovery from a 2020 theft and subsequent restoration, which revealed that facial features added posthumously in 1903 were removed to restore the artist's original vision.