First Van Gogh to be sold in France in 20 years to go under the hammer at Artcurial

The first Van Gogh painting to go under the hammer in France in more than two decades was unveiled Wednesday. “Women Mending Nets in the Dunes”, which the Dutch artist painted early in his career at Scheveningen near The Hague, is expected to go for around five million euros ($6 million) when it is auctioned in June. But with the art market booming, and prices for artists like Vincent Van Gogh rocketing, experts said it was hard to predict exactly when the bidding would stop. The scene dates from the same period in 1882 when Van Gogh painted “View of the Sea at Scheveningen”, which was stolen by the Italian Camorra organised crime syndicate from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam in 2002 and discovered in Naples in 2016 thanks to a tip-off from a suspected drug trafficker. The oil on paper, which belongs to a European collector, also graced the walls of the Van Gogh Museum for several years after being previously on show in Montreal.