Van Gogh goes to China, with a more affordable early painting – The Art Newspaper

Christie’s is to auction A Girl in a Wood (August 1883) in Hong Kong, in a bold move to tap the Chinese market. The estimate at the 27 March sale is $1.3m-$2.6m (HK$10m-$20m), a relatively modest sum compared with Van Gogh’s later paintings. His early Dutch works go for much less than those done in France.

In A Girl in a Wood the diminutive figure is dwarfed by the foreground tree, with its roots spreading over the reddish ground. A path in the middle distance draws the eye into the composition, with a brightly illuminated sky on the horizon.

The forest landscape was painted while Van Gogh was living in The Hague. It was probably done in the Haagse Bos, the wood that lies to the north east of the centre of the city, within easy walking distance.

The Christie’s picture has long been considered to be one of his very first oil paintings, dating from August 1882, along with the similarly titled Girl in a Wood (now Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo). But recent research by specialists at Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum redated the Christie’s picture to a year later, to August 1883.

The Christie’s painting is on canvas, whereas a year before, in 1882, he had been using oil paint on paper. An examination of the Christie’s work reveals that it was painted on the same roll of canvas as a third composition, Edge of a Wood (August-September 1883). 

The pair of later forest scenes would have been among his last paintings done in The Hague. Two weeks later he abandoned his girlfriend, Sien Hoornik, and left to work in Drenthe, in the north of the Netherlands.

China, now a major market

A Girl in a Wood was last sold in 2002, also at Christie’s, when it fetched $670,000. It was then acquired by a Chinese buyer, the Parkview property company and its chairman George Wong (who died in 2017). Last year there were unconfirmed reports that the company had been hoping to use the painting as collateral for a finance arrangement with Sotheby’s. 

Wong was among the first Chinese collectors to buy a Van Gogh, although the situation has changed radically in recent years. Now as many as half of Van Gogh’s works sold at auction have gone to China.

Sotheby’s was the first Western company to actually auction a Van Gogh in Asia. In 2021 it sold Still life: Vase with Gladioli (August-September 1886) in Hong Kong for the equivalent of $9m.

In 2024 Christie’s followed suit, auctioning Moored Boats (July 1887) in Hong Kong. It sold for the equivalent of $32m.

A Girl in a Wood will now be displayed at Christie’s Hong Kong from 24 March until the sale three days later. It has not been shown by Christie’s in New York and was only in London for a brief low-key display last month, an indication of China’s dominance of the Van Gogh market.

Arco Yu, co-head of the 27 March sale, says that “Asian clients are bidding on high-value Van Gogh works in Christie’s sales internationally, which is why we are offering his works here in Hong Kong”. She adds that it is “very rare for Asian collectors to see an early Van Gogh”, so the coming display and sale offers an unusual opportunity.

Other Van Gogh news

The Van Gogh Museum has just bought Virginie Demont-Breton’s painting The Man is at Sea (1889), a work which inspired Van Gogh. It depicts a mother, holding her baby, who sits by the fireplace, worrying about the dangers faced by her fisher husband. 

While at the asylum outside Saint-Rémy-de-Provence Van Gogh saw a print of The Man is at Sea. Writing to his brother Theo in September 1889, Vincent described it as “a very pretty engraving”. 

The following month, after he had begun transforming black-and-white prints by other artists into paintings, he made his own personal version of The Man is at Sea. Van Gogh’s colours were very much his own and he never had the opportunity to see Demont-Breton’s painting.

The Demont-Breton painting came up for sale at the Tefaf art fair in Maastricht earlier this month, from the collection of Dallas-based Michael and Stephanie Seay. Owned by them for 20 years, it had hung in their dining room. The painting was sold to the museum through Texas-based Gallery 19C, at a price of around €600,000.

We pay tribute to Ton de Brouwer (1943-2026), the specialist on Van Gogh’s period in Nuenen, who died on 12 February, aged 82. In 1976 he had set up the Van Gogh Documentation Centre in Nuenen, the village in the south of the Netherlands where Vincent’s parents lived. De Bouwer’s efforts eventually led to the establishment of the present visitor centre, the Van Gogh Village Nuenen.

De Brouwer went on to write a series of publications on the artist. His final contribution was in 2024, when he convincingly redated Van Gogh’s sketch of Austin Friars church in London. He argued that it was not drawn in London in front of the church, but a few months later from a print (Eigen Haard magazine, 7 July 1877), after Van Gogh had moved to Amsterdam.

De Brouwer’s extensive archive has been donated to the Van Gogh Museum. He was buried in the old cemetery in Nuenen, which was painted by the artist several times with the church tower.

Martin Bailey is a leading Van Gogh specialist and special correspondent for The Art Newspaper. He has curated exhibitions at the Barbican Art Gallery, Compton Verney/National Gallery of Scotland and Tate Britain.

Martin has written a number of bestselling books on Van Gogh’s years in France: The Sunflowers Are Mine: The Story of Van Gogh’s Masterpiece (Frances Lincoln 2013, UK and US), Studio of the South: Van Gogh in Provence (Frances Lincoln 2016, UK and US), Starry Night: Van Gogh at the Asylum (White Lion Publishing 2018, UK and US) and Van Gogh’s Finale: Auvers and the Artist’s Rise to Fame (Frances Lincoln 2021, UK and US). The Sunflowers are Mine (2024, UK and US) and Van Gogh’s Finale (2024, UK and US) are also now available in a more compact paperback format.

His other recent books include Living with Vincent van Gogh: The Homes & Landscapes that shaped the Artist (White Lion Publishing 2019, UK and US), which provides an overview of the artist’s life. The Illustrated Provence Letters of Van Gogh has been reissued (Batsford 2021, UK and US). My Friend Van Gogh/Emile Bernard provides the first English translation of Bernard’s writings on Van Gogh (David Zwirner Books 2023, UKand US).

To contact Martin Bailey, please email vangogh@theartnewspaper.com

Please note that he does not undertake authentications.

Explore all of Martin’s adventures with Van Gogh here