Christie’s sold the double-sided Van Gogh drawing for €1,206,500 including fees on April 17 during its Art Impressionniste et Moderne auction in Paris, where the lot outperformed its pre-sale expectations by more than ten times. The work, created in Auvers-sur-Oise in the weeks before the artist’s death on July 29 1890, had remained largely unseen since a single month’s exhibition in Argentina in 1959. Auction officials noted that the sheet had received only a brief unillustrated mention in a 1970 catalogue and was omitted from a later standard reference work.
The recto side shows two groups of women bending to pick peas in a field, sketched with rapid economical lines that reflect the agricultural scenes Van Gogh encountered between the main road and the River Oise. Its verso depicts trees set against hills, and both images carry the artist’s own colour notations including terms such as “vert bleu”, “jaune” and “violet”. Christie’s specialists said these annotations indicate the sheets served as studies for oils that were either never executed or have since been lost.
Provenance traces the drawing directly to Dr Paul Gachet, the physician who treated Van Gogh in Auvers and apparently received or acquired it around the time of the artist’s death. Gachet’s son sold the sheet in 1954, after which it passed through a collection in Buenos Aires before entering a Spanish private collection in 1990. The current owners, descendants of that Spanish family, consigned it to the Paris sale, according to Christie’s sale notes.
The Van Gogh Museum authenticated the work upon its recent re-emergence, ending decades of obscurity that had kept it outside most major catalogues and exhibitions. A museum assessment identified at least ten similar colour-annotated sketches from Van Gogh’s Auvers period, none of which appear to have resulted in surviving paintings. The Art Newspaper first reported the discovery and upcoming sale on April 3, highlighting how the piece had escaped broader scholarly attention until now.
Van Gogh produced hundreds of drawings throughout his career, yet works on paper from his final months remain particularly scarce and sought after. Auction data compiled by Christie’s shows that a different Van Gogh drawing, “Sower in a Wheatfield with Setting Sun” from 1888, achieved $11.2 million at Sotheby’s in November 2025, setting a record for the category. Such results reflect sustained international demand for the artist’s graphic work even as oil paintings continue to dominate headline prices.
The Paris auction itself realised $11.41 million across 83 sold lots, surpassing its high estimate and posting an 81 percent sell-through rate according to post-sale figures released by Christie’s. This Van Gogh sheet accounted for a significant share of the total after bidding pushed it well beyond expectations. The outcome underscores the premium placed on fresh-to-market material with strong provenance ties to the artist’s final chapter.
