Turner Prize nominee’s hunt for Van Gogh bought by family for £12
WHO wouldn’t want a Van Gogh in the family? After all, not only is he regarded as one of the world’s greatest artists, but his paintings consistently sell for mind-boggling sums.
Well, relatives of Tacita Dean, the British artist and Turner Prize nominee, had one. In fact they bought one of his paintings for £12 as far back as 1896, becoming some of the first collectors in Britain to acquire Van Gogh’s work.
Unfortunately, they went on to sell it in 1932, just as it was beginning to increase sharply in value.
Now Dean, an acclaimed filmmaker, photographer and painter herself, is trying to track down the painting, Interior of a Restaurant, so that – even if she can’t afford to buy it back – she can at least gaze on it in person.
“It would be lovely to see it,” she told The Sunday Telegraph. “Of course I could never buy it. It would be hundreds of millions of pounds, but I would love to see it.”
Interior of a Restaurant, which Vincent van Gogh painted in Paris in 1887, was bought for 300 francs by Esther Sutro, the sister of Dean’s great-grandmother. It shows the interior of a restaurant, just before the evening rush.
Sutro and her husband Alfred, a playwright, were among the first British collectors to buy a Van Gogh, who had died only six years earlier.
In 1932, Alfred admitted in his memoirs the painting had become valuable, but two years later Esther died and her sister Florence Van Gruisen was forced to sell the painting and divide the proceeds among her siblings. Dean believes it sold for £2,500 and understands it is in the hands of a wealthy private collector from Texas.
A curious set of coincidences has followed her detective work. She recalled her father telling her how, during World War II, he had been in Gogh, the German town which shares the painter’s family name and she went on to work in the town as an artist.
“That triggered the whole project,” said Dean, who is hoping to use curators at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, as intermediaries to contact the current owner.
Van Gogh specialist Martin Bailey, of The Art Newspaper, said: “When the Sutros acquired a Van Gogh, they were among the very earliest Britons to buy his work. It is nice a major contemporary artist had an early Van Gogh in the family – and interesting Dean is keen to see the picture.”