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Revealed: When lightning struck, rescuers of Van Gogh's works were rewarded with a drawing

Coming up at Christie’s and estimated at around $4m, the sketch given to neighbours who doused the fire and saved the Van Gogh family home and collection in 1941

a blog by Martin Bailey
28 October 2022
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Installation shot of Van Gogh’s Parc à Arles avec un coin de la Maison Jaune (Park at Arles with a Corner of the Yellow House) (April 1888) Credit: Christie’s

Installation shot of Van Gogh’s Parc à Arles avec un coin de la Maison Jaune (Park at Arles with a Corner of the Yellow House) (April 1888) Credit: Christie’s

Adventures with Van Gogh

Adventures with Van Gogh is a weekly blog by Martin Bailey, our long-standing correspondent and expert on the artist. Published every Friday, his stories range from newsy items about this most intriguing artist to scholarly pieces based on his own meticulous investigations and discoveries.

An astonishing story lies behind one of Vincent van Gogh’s distinctive reed-pen sketches, which will be auctioned by Christie’s in New York on 9 November. Park at Arles with a Corner of the Yellow House (April 1888) is estimated at $3m-$5m. 

The reason why this drawing left the Van Gogh family collection during the Second World War is hardly known, even to specialists. The home of Vincent Willem van Gogh, the nephew of the artist, was at Laren, a small town just east of Amsterdam.

On 30 August 1941 the house was struck by lightning. Vincent Willem and his family were away, but their housekeeper and maid remained there. The roof caught fire and it spread to the top floor, threatening their entire home.

Vincent Willem van Gogh’s family home, named ’t Lanthuys, in Laren (mid-20th century) Credit: Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation) Photograph reproduced in Hans Luijten, Jo van Gogh-Bonger: The Woman Who Made Vincent Famous (Bloomsbury, November 2022)

Vincent Willem owned many hundreds of Van Gogh paintings and drawings, which he had inherited from his father Theo, the brother of Vincent. Although the finest works had been sent for safekeeping in a wartime bunker in the sand dunes of the North Sea coast, he hung some of the lesser pictures in his Laren home.

Fortunately neighbours spotted that the house had been struck, and they rushed to help. The fire was quickly extinguished.

Vincent Willem was extremely grateful to his neighbours and gave Egbert Jan and Louise Francisca Kuipers a drawing: Park at Arles with a Corner of the Yellow House. In 2000 their descendants sold it to a New York dealer and it was then bought by Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft.

Van Gogh’s Parc à Arles avec un coin de la Maison Jaune (Park at Arles with a Corner of the Yellow House) (April 1888) Credit: Christie’s

Park at Arles with a Corner of the Yellow House was drawn with a reed pen, which gives a distinctive quality to many of Van Gogh’s Arles drawings. He would cut the reeds from the beds of nearby canals.

The sketch depicts the public garden in Place Lamartine, which was overlooked by the Yellow House, Van Gogh’s home. A few months later he would share it for two months with his artist friend Paul Gauguin.

In the drawing, the eye is led along the curved path towards two windows which can just be made out on the right side. Although the topography is not entirely clear, the larger window seems to be in a bedroom on the upper floor of the Yellow House and the smaller one, higher up, on a larger building slightly further away in Avenue Montmajour.

Postcard of Place Lamartine and Avenue Montmajour, showing the Yellow House (the small building behind the lamppost) (around 1905)

Van Gogh took out the lease for the Yellow House on 1 May 1888 and the drawing was probably done at the very end of April, when he was considering moving from his hotel to somewhere more spacious and private. So as he drew the verdant scene, he must have been dreaming about his new life in a home of his own. Vincent posted the sketch to his brother Theo on 1 May, the day that he announced the move.

The drawing is being sold as part of the massive Allen sale at Christie’s, which is expected to fetch over $1bn. It also includes an important Van Gogh landscape of spring blossoms. Orchard with Cypresses (April 1888) is likely to achieve over $100m, which would make it the most expensive Van Gogh ever sold at auction.


Other Van Gogh news:

• A Van Gogh letter is coming up for auction, estimated at €100,000-€120,000. Written on 20 January 1890 from the asylum near Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, it is addressed to his friends Joseph and Marie Ginoux, former neighbours in Arles. Most of the letter is philosophising about illnesses, his own and that of Marie. Surprisingly, Vincent argues that his troubles had a positive outcome: “Illness has done me good – it would be ungrateful not to acknowledge that; it has calmed me.” The letter is to be auctioned by Drouot Estimations in Paris on 10 November.

Van Gogh’s letter to Joseph and Marie Ginoux, 20 January 1890 Credit: Drouot Estimations, Paris

Martin Bailey is the author of Van Gogh’s Finale: Auvers and the Artist’s Rise to Fame (Frances Lincoln, 2021, available in the UK and US ). He is a leading Van Gogh specialist and investigative reporter for The Art Newspaper. Bailey has curated Van Gogh exhibitions at the Barbican Art Gallery and Compton Verney/National Gallery of Scotland. He was a co-curator of Tate Britain’s The EY Exhibition: Van Gogh and Britain (27 March-11 August 2019).

Martin Bailey’s recent Van Gogh books

Bailey has written a number of other bestselling books, including The Sunflowers Are Mine: The Story of Van Gogh's Masterpiece (Frances Lincoln 2013, available in the UK and US), Studio of the South: Van Gogh in Provence(Frances Lincoln 2016, available in the UK and US), Starry Night: Van Gogh at the Asylum (White Lion Publishing 2018, available in the UK and US) and Van Gogh’s Finale: Auvers and the Artist’s Rise to Fame (Frances Lincoln 2021, available in the UK and US). Bailey's Living with Vincent van Gogh: the Homes and Landscapes that Shaped the Artist (White Lion Publishing 2019, available in the UK and US) provides an overview of the artist’s life. The Illustrated Provence Letters of Van Gogh has been reissued (Batsford 2021, available in the UK and US).

To contact Martin Bailey, please email vangogh@theartnewspaper.com. Please note that he does not undertake authentications.

Read more from Martin's Adventures with Van Gogh blog here.

Adventures with Van GoghVincent Van GoghAuctionsArt marketChristie's
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