Vincent Van Gogh’s Still Life 'Romans parisiens' Sold for $63m

Vincent Van Gogh’s Piles de romans parisiens et roses dans une verre (Romans parisiens) has been sold at Sotheby's for $62.7m which is the second highest price for a still life by the artist.

It appeared at the auction of The Cindy and Jay Pritzker Collection and had an estimate in the region of $40m. Five bidders spent seven minutes battling for the November-December 1887 work which depicts a pile of paperback books casually placed on a table,  

Vincent van Gogh was a very keen reader in English, Dutch, German, and French, and his letters mention around 150 separate authors and books. Particular favorites were Émile Zola, the Goncourt brothers, Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, and George Eliot. He enjoyed the contemporary paperback novels of French writers published by Charpentier in Paris which had yellow covers and take centrestage in the painting. A similar subject, and possible a study for the current work, is held by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

Parisian Novels was painted when Vincent was living with his brother Theo in Paris and the setting is probably a room in Theo’s apartment in Rue Lepic.