A rare early work by Vincent van Gogh has been sold for a reported several million euros at an art fair in the Netherlands, its previous owner and Dutch media said Sunday, March 10.
Van Gogh's "Tete de paysanne à la coiffe blanche, also known as Head of an Old Peasant Woman with a White Cap, was on sale at the annual European Art Fair in Maastricht for an asking price of €4.5 million ($4.9 million).
"It has been sold to a museum outside the European Union," said Bill Rau, president of the M.S. Rau Gallery who had put the painting up for sale. "We cannot discuss the price," Rau stated in an email. Dutch national news agency ANP however said the asking price "was matched by the sales price." Although the name of the private museum was not given, "it will be accessible to the public," ANP added.
Van Gogh painted the work around 1884 while living with his parents in the southern Dutch town of Nuenen, the year before he completed his other famous work from the period, The Potato Eaters.
Visitors to the fair, known as TEFAF, can marvel at a treasure trove of paintings, sculptures and jewelry – all up for sale until Thursday. Among the many pieces up for grabs, which include names such as Édouard Manet, Peter Paul Rubens and Auguste Rodin, the undisputed stars of the show have been Van Gogh's Head of an Old Peasant Woman with a White Cap and Wassily Kandinsky's Murnau mit Kirche II.
Painted in 1910, the Kandinsky masterpiece was sold by Sotheby's in London last year for a record $45 million. Art dealer Robert Landau bought the painting at the auction, the most expensive Kandinsky ever sold. Landau did not want to disclose a selling price but mentioned the painting was recently valued at €100 million. "But I have nothing to say about the price. The world knows what we paid for it and we will only sell it to someone we like, and who will keep it in a nice place," Landau said ahead of the fair's official opening.