Vincent VanGough wrote to his brother Theo and
mentioned he had painted “Sunset at Montmajour” on July 4, 1888. Apparently he
wasn’t too pleased with the result. According to an article by Toby Sterling
(Associated Press), the artist shipped the painting to his brother and in 1908 it
found its way to a neophyte art collector. Unfortunately the Norwegian
industrialist/collector was told by a so-called expert that the painting was a
fake and so it languished in the collector’s attic until it was discovered as
part of his estate in 1970. It was then determined that the painting was an
original VanGough after all.
There’s a lesson there for me in that sad story. If
the collector had valued the painting because it spoke to him in some way, if
the brush strokes captured his imagination, or simply made him feel good,
perhaps he would have ignored the erroneous appraisal and hung the painting
where he could enjoy it. Something must have caught his eye for him to have
purchased it in the first place. But because someone else denigrated it as a mere
copy, the work of art was relegated to obscurity and the owner lost almost 70
years of pleasure. How sad. For that collector, its value lay only in its
provenance and not its intrinsic beauty. A rather shallow assessment if you ask
me.
Here’s
to the “stuff” we love! Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and “worth” has
many levels, money being sometimes the lowest for those who trust and value
their personal preferences over cash.
