A painting believed to be one of the last produced by Vincent Van Gogh goes to the auction bloc in New York on November 7, Sotheby's auction house announced. "The Fields" (Wheat Fields) is expected to sell for between 28 and 35 million dollars, Sotheby's estimated.
Painted in June-July 1890 "in the final weeks of the artist's life," the picture depicts sprawling gold-wheat fields in Auvers-sur-Oise, France. "Van Gogh's final months were spent at the Ravoux Inn in Auvers, and the present canvas was among the works that hung in his room at the time of his death," the statement read.
The artist's brother, Theo, kept the painting in the family and sold it only in 1907 to dealer Paul Cassirer. From 2001-2007 its anonymous owner lent it to the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, where it was on display.
The painting will be on view at Sotheby's offices in Hong Kong on October 2-4, and in London on October 7-12, the company said. Van Gogh died in Auvers-sur-Oise on July 29, 1890, at the age of 37, two days after going to a field and shooting himself in the chest.
He had recently moved to the town after spending months at a mental hospital in southern France where he famously cut off a piece of his own ear following an argument with friend and fellow artist Paul Gauguin.
At Auvers, then a farming town of some 2,000 people, Van Gogh painted mostly fields dotted with yellow stalks of bundled wheat, forests, gardens, houses and portraits, all in bright colors. He created 72 paintings and over 30 drawings during the final 70 days of his life.