A rare still life by Van Gogh will be offered for sale at the Tefaf in Maastricht

A rare still life by Vincent van Gogh (Zundert, 1853 - Auvers-sur-Oise, 1890) will be offered for sale at the Tefaf in Maastricht, the major antique art market exhibition whose 38th edition will be held March 15-20, 2025. Bringing Van Gogh’s work to the exhibition will be the MS Rau Gallery in New Orleans , which already last year sold a Peasant’s Head also at the same fair: the work, from the Nuenen period, was bought for 4.5 million euros by a museum outside Europe. Now, the gallery is attempting to repeat last year’s success with an even more unusual work: a Still Life with Two Bags and a Bottle, also from the early period of the Dutch painter’s career.

Executed in oil, the work denotes Van Gogh’s talent for using everyday objects to create compositions capable of surprise. The canvas shows thick impasto, heavy shading, and an intense palette, all hallmarks of van Gogh’s technique in the mid-1880s. By 1883, Vincent van Gogh had reluctantly returned to his family home in Nuenen, where, despite strained relations with his parents and a sense of isolation, he discovered renewed meaning in his art. Nuenen’s rural setting and his connection to Dutch artistic traditions provided him with the freedom to explore new subjects and reconnect with his heritage. This transformative period culminated in The Potato Eaters (1885), one of his most famous works, which captures the lives of rural laborers with an unfiltered realism that reflected his deep empathy.

During this period, Van Gogh studied still life: while teaching art to local students to support himself, he had opportunities to reinterpret traditional still lifes, reinterpreting them according to his emerging personal style. In a letter to his brother Theo, Vincent expressed enthusiasm for teaching still life to villagers as his technique was improving, hinting at the innovative approach that would later redefine the genre with works such as his celebrated Sunflowers.

For some artists, still lifes served as mere technical exercises, but for Van Gogh they reflected his deep artistic ambition, as seen in Still Life with Two Bags and a Bottle. During his time in Nuenen, a period marked by hardship, Van Gogh laid the groundwork for his distinctive vision, transforming the still life tradition into something expressive, bold and ultimately transformative for art history. He was deeply moved by the lives of hard-working villagers, who found beauty in the connection between people, nature and domestic life. The sacks and bottle in this composition allude precisely to the small daily joys that sustained people in the challenges of life among the countryside.

The painting, before coming to the MS Rau Gallery in New Orleans, was owned by a private collection in Pennsylvania. It was first exhibited in Rotterdam in 1903, with the second exhibition recorded in The Hague in 1950. The last time the public was able to see this work was between 1987 and 1988, at the Van Gogh in Brabant exhibition held at the Noordbrabants Museum in ’s-Hertogenbosch. The sale price is currently confidential.

A rare still life by Van Gogh will be offered for sale at the Tefaf in Maastricht

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.