all likelihood would disappear once more into a private collection (which it duly did). For the briefest of moments, though, it was available for all to see; you simply had to walk in off the street and stand in front of it. It’s gone now, not for good, hopefully, but I’d be surprised if it resurfaces before I’m dead. Last time, it lay tucked out of sight for over a hundred years.
That’s the thing about auctions: you brush with beauty of all kinds, but the encounters are fleeting, transitory, never to be repeated – like catching the eye of a gorgeous woman you pass in the street.
I don’t mention any of this to Edie as I usher her inside Christie’s on King Street. A man in a black uniform moves to intercept us. ‘I’m sorry, sir – guide dogs only.’
‘He is a mental health companion dog.’ It’s a line I’ve had to use a couple of times on buses, the voice a mild variation on my trainspotter/computer geek voice.
‘A mental health companion dog?’ He glances at Edie, who gives him a sweet and mildly concerned look. ‘Well, I’m sure that’s fine,’ he says. ‘Go ahead.’
It’s a great sale, probably the most impressive I’ve ever viewed. I know what to expect because I’ve checked out the online catalogue. Among the forty or so lots there are three Renoirs, five Picassos, two Matisses, a Van Gogh, as well as a couple of Giacometti bronzes. Some of the star pieces are strangely disappointing (you can never really tell from the catalogue). Conversely, there’s a landscape by Bonnard that looked flat and featureless on my laptop, but in the flesh it shimmers with the heat of a Mediterranean afternoon. You can almost hear the cicadas.
I always feel a touch of sadness whenever I stand in front of a Van Gogh painting. It’s not just the crazed genius of the man, or his early death at his own hand; it’s knowing that he went to his grave with no sense of the extraordinary impact he would have on the art world. Only a handful of his contemporaries understood that he was a visionary, a prophet.
The picture for sale is a small oil on canvas of the French asylum near Arles where he finished up. A swirling feast of blues, violets and oranges, it is estimated to sell for between ten and twelve million pounds. It’s an absurd sum when you consider that he barely earned enough to feed himself during his own lifetime.
Edie, who I’m coming to understand has a contrary streak, disagrees with me, although there’s a playful edge to the counter-argument she puts forward: that when all is said and done, we’re just a pile of bones and a reputation. Maybe Van Gogh understood this; maybe he knew it was better to die at the height of his genius than as a bloke who had mastered his depression and then gone on to produce less good work for another forty years. ‘It’s like Steffi Graf.’
‘Steffi Graf?’
‘She was a tennis player.’
‘I know who Steffi Graf is.’
‘Steffi understood. She got out at the top of her game: I’m the best, thank you and goodbye.’
‘Maybe it was her in-depth knowledge of Van Gogh’s oeuvre that informed her decision.’
‘If that’s all you’ve got to say, then I’ve won the argument.’
‘What argument? Van Gogh did not kill himself to secure his reputation for all of time.’
‘Ah, but you don’t know that. He might have.’
Edie clearly knows a lot about art but is happy to wear her learning lightly. When I push her, it emerges that she grew up in a cultured, bookish household, the only child of a composer cum music journalist father and a potter cum amateur archaeologist mother. They were always dragging her off to exhibitions and concerts when she was younger. J is the same: he was exposed to culture of all kinds from an early age, absorbing it by osmosis. I’m secretly envious of such people. There was never much of that sort of thing for Emma and me when we were growing up.
‘My dad’s a left-wing academic of the old school. He saw music
That’s the thing about auctions: you brush with beauty of all kinds, but the encounters are fleeting, transitory, never to be repeated – like catching the eye of a gorgeous woman you pass in the street.
I don’t mention any of this to Edie as I usher her inside Christie’s on King Street. A man in a black uniform moves to intercept us. ‘I’m sorry, sir – guide dogs only.’
‘He is a mental health companion dog.’ It’s a line I’ve had to use a couple of times on buses, the voice a mild variation on my trainspotter/computer geek voice.
‘A mental health companion dog?’ He glances at Edie, who gives him a sweet and mildly concerned look. ‘Well, I’m sure that’s fine,’ he says. ‘Go ahead.’
It’s a great sale, probably the most impressive I’ve ever viewed. I know what to expect because I’ve checked out the online catalogue. Among the forty or so lots there are three Renoirs, five Picassos, two Matisses, a Van Gogh, as well as a couple of Giacometti bronzes. Some of the star pieces are strangely disappointing (you can never really tell from the catalogue). Conversely, there’s a landscape by Bonnard that looked flat and featureless on my laptop, but in the flesh it shimmers with the heat of a Mediterranean afternoon. You can almost hear the cicadas.
I always feel a touch of sadness whenever I stand in front of a Van Gogh painting. It’s not just the crazed genius of the man, or his early death at his own hand; it’s knowing that he went to his grave with no sense of the extraordinary impact he would have on the art world. Only a handful of his contemporaries understood that he was a visionary, a prophet.
The picture for sale is a small oil on canvas of the French asylum near Arles where he finished up. A swirling feast of blues, violets and oranges, it is estimated to sell for between ten and twelve million pounds. It’s an absurd sum when you consider that he barely earned enough to feed himself during his own lifetime.
Edie, who I’m coming to understand has a contrary streak, disagrees with me, although there’s a playful edge to the counter-argument she puts forward: that when all is said and done, we’re just a pile of bones and a reputation. Maybe Van Gogh understood this; maybe he knew it was better to die at the height of his genius than as a bloke who had mastered his depression and then gone on to produce less good work for another forty years. ‘It’s like Steffi Graf.’
‘Steffi Graf?’
‘She was a tennis player.’
‘I know who Steffi Graf is.’
‘Steffi understood. She got out at the top of her game: I’m the best, thank you and goodbye.’
‘Maybe it was her in-depth knowledge of Van Gogh’s oeuvre that informed her decision.’
‘If that’s all you’ve got to say, then I’ve won the argument.’
‘What argument? Van Gogh did not kill himself to secure his reputation for all of time.’
‘Ah, but you don’t know that. He might have.’
Edie clearly knows a lot about art but is happy to wear her learning lightly. When I push her, it emerges that she grew up in a cultured, bookish household, the only child of a composer cum music journalist father and a potter cum amateur archaeologist mother. They were always dragging her off to exhibitions and concerts when she was younger. J is the same: he was exposed to culture of all kinds from an early age, absorbing it by osmosis. I’m secretly envious of such people. There was never much of that sort of thing for Emma and me when we were growing up.
‘My dad’s a left-wing academic of the old school. He saw music
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