HYDERABAD: An early landscape painting by Dutch Post-Impressionist artist Vincent Van Gogh has sold for $8.3 million at an auction here. Painted in 1882, “Fishing Net Menders in the Dunes” depicts peasant women working on the land, inspired by the countryside around The Hague in the Netherlands, the BBC reported on Tuesday. It was bought by an American collector followed by a bidding war. The painting is the first Van Gogh to be auctioned in France for more than 20 years.
“It’s fetched such a high price because there are hardly any Van Goghs on the market... You can only find them in private collections or museums,” said the auctioneer, Francis Briest. Van Gogh painted the work when he was 29 years old, during a formative period spent living near The Hague.
The last sale at a Paris auction of a Van Gogh painting was “The Garden at Auvers”, sold in the mid-1990s for $10 million.