The Gauguins, which span the years 1876-87, all come from the family of Claude Favre, a childhood friend of the artist. They comprise a portrait of Claude painted in 1877; another of his father Philibert and a landscape of the Port de Javel in Paris which was discovered hidden behind the same frame as the Philibert portrait.
The other two Gauguins are a tambourine decorated with flowers and an exotic bird and a sketch on headed paper depicting members of Gauguin’s own family and home, done for his friend Claude.
The van Gogh painting to be offered in the same sale is also an early work, produced when the artist was living in The Hague. Raccommodeuses de filets dans les dunes of 1882 shows peasant women mending nets in the fields and is painted in oil on paper on panel.
The work is significant because it is also referenced in one of van Gogh’s letters to his brother Theo.
Discussing its creation, he writes, “Something that I have seen in Scheveningen. A wide range within the dunes in the morning after the rain shower. The grass is relatively quite green – and the nets are deployed in enormous circles, creating deep tones on the floor, in black, green or reddish grey.
On this dark ground, women in white caps and men, sitting or standing and some even walking about as strange shadows, hung or mended the nets. In itself the scene was as striking, as typically dark and austere as the finest portrayal of anything we could imagine from Millet, Israels or Groux. Above this landscape, a simple grey sky with a clear band across the horizon. Despite of the rain showers, I have also made a study on a sheet of oiled cloth.”
The 16in x 2ft (42 x 62cm) landscape, which belongs to a private collector, has been on display in the Van Gogh Museum since 2009 and prior to that was on show in the Hague and in Montreal. It will have an estimate of €3m-5m when it comes up for sale at Artcurial this summer.
