Vincent: October 23, 1888
“Paul Gauguin (Man in a Red Beret)”, December 1888
Vincent has a guest, Paul Gauguin, who he knows from Paris. They met last autumn and Vincent’s been begging him to come and help him launch his Studio of the South. Paul is quite a character, full of stories of his travels.
He grew up in Peru and has been to the Caribbean. He was in the merchant marine and worked as a stockbroker before he decided to become an artist, rather late in life, just like Vincent.
They get along famously, even when they argue about the “right” way to paint. Full of theories, both of them. Gauguin wants poor old Vincent to try working from memory instead of always having a life subject or a model in front of him. Maybe Vincent doesn’t have the same kind of memories as Paul.
“Red Vineyards of Arles”
Van Gogh is remembered with sympathy as having sold only one painting during his lifetime, and it’s widely believed that that painting was “The Red Vineyards”. This was among the works he contributed to the 1890 exhibition staged by the Belgian avant-garde group Les Vingt in Brussels, where it was purchased for 400 francs by the host group’s own Anna Boch, the sister of Vincent’s painter friend Eugène Boch, whom he had depicted in “Le Peintre aux Étoiles” two years earlier.
It has been noted, however, that Theo Van Gogh was informed in late 1888 that a London art dealer had sold one of Vincent’s self-portraits, although this sale has never been corroborated. Another art expert has also suggested that “The Red Vineyard” was not sold until the year after Van Gogh’s death.
