It started with this quote from 3-2-1 Thursday by Jame Clear with hat tip to Dylan O’Sullivan.
Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh — who sold only one painting during his life — on self-worth:
“If I am worth anything later, I am worth something now. For wheat is wheat, even if people think it is a grass in the beginning.”
Great quote but what was “the one painting Vincent sold in his lifetime? That question took me here:
Full article here; https://www.thoughtco.com/van-gogh-sold-only-one-painting-4050008
By Lisa Marder MLA, Harvard Graduate School of Design. An artist and educator who studied drawing and painting at Harvard University. She is an instructor at the South Shore Art Center in Massachusetts when she is not working on her own art.
Although lore has it that the post-Impressionist painter, Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), sold only one painting during his lifetime, different theories exist. The one painting commonly thought to have been sold is The Red Vineyard at Arles (The Vigne Rouge), now located at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow. However, some sources posit that different paintings sold first, and that other paintings and drawings were sold or bartered in addition to The Red Vineyard at Arles. However, it is true that The Red Vineyard at Arles is the only painting sold during van Gogh’s lifetime the name of which we actually know, and that was “officially” recorded and acknowledged by the art world, and hence the lore persists.
Of course, bearing in mind that van Gogh didn’t start painting until he was twenty-seven years old, and died when he was thirty-seven, it would not be unremarkable that he did not sell many.
Furthermore, the paintings that were to become famous were the ones produced after he went to Arles, France in 1888, only two years before he died. What is remarkable is that just a few decades after his death, his art would become well-known worldwide and that he would eventually become one of the most famous artists ever.
Marder, Lisa. “The Lore: Van Gogh Sold Only One Painting During His Life.” ThoughtCo, Apr. 5, 2023, thoughtco.com/van-gogh-sold-only-one-painting-4050008.