Van Gogh Watercolour ‘The Harvest in Provence’ Heads to Sotheby’s With $35 Million Estimate
A rare watercolour by Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) is set to come to auction in New York, offering collectors a work that sits at the intersection of finished image, technical experiment, and market trophy. The Harvest in Provence, painted in June 1888, will be sold by Sotheby’s on 19 May with an estimate of $25 million to $35 million.
The sheet measures 49 x 61 cm and was made only days before Van Gogh completed the related oil painting, The Harvest. Yet the watercolour is not easily reduced to a preliminary study. Van Gogh signed it and inscribed the title, La Moisson en Provence, in the lower-left corner — a sign that he may have regarded it as a standalone work. He also proposed to Theo that the Paris dealer Georges Thomas might be interested in selling it.
The composition reveals how deliberately Van Gogh built the image. He began with a pencil sketch, then used reed pen and ink to define the forms, and finally applied at least eight different watercolours. Two small horses and carts appear in the middle distance, adding movement to the broad sweep of wheatfields and farm buildings. The paper bears a Whatman watermark, indicating that it was made at a mill in Kent, England.
That material detail connects to Van Gogh’s own correspondence. A month after finishing the watercolour, he wrote to Theo that he was getting through “so many sheets of Whatman.” He had received the watercolour paints from Paris only two weeks before making the work, and he sent the sheet to Theo on 15 or 16 June, just before finishing the oil painting.
The relationship between the two versions is close, but not identical. In the oil, the horizon sits higher and the viewpoint feels slightly more elevated. Both works appear to have been painted from the outskirts of Arles, facing northeast, likely from one of the remaining windmills in the area, most probably the Moulin de Jonquet.
The watercolour’s later history is equally notable. Julius Meier-Graefe reproduced it as a lithograph in 1899, described as the first color image of a Van Gogh work published anywhere. By 1930, Anne Kessler had acquired the work after it passed through several owners.
For Sotheby’s, the sale brings together rarity, condition, and a work whose importance extends beyond the auction room. It is a watercolour that records Van Gogh thinking through a landscape, then returning to it in oil with a sharpened sense of place.
