Woman turned down Van Gogh worth millions
Pensioner offered painting in house clearance
PENSIONER Gaye Hulme can be forgiven for feeling a little miffed by news that one of Vincent Van Gogh’s earliest works has sold for millions.
Fifty-three years ago, she was offered the masterpiece – Peasant Woman in Front of a Farmhouse – for free during a house clearance. But it was dirty and damaged so she walked away with a brass handbell instead.
The cash splashed on the 1885 painting – sold at the European Fine Art Fair in Maastricht last week – has not been revealed.
It was valued at £13 million, however.
Ms Hulme, now 76 and living in the Cotswolds, has been left pondering what might have been.
“Oh dear, how very naive of me. I learned my lesson the hard way,” she said.
She is not alone in feeling a little put out.
In 1967, Uttoxeter auctioneers Bagshaws, which specialises in agricultural livestock and machinery, sold Peasant Woman in Front of a Farmhouse for the princely sum of... £4.
They were also unaware of the artist responsible.
The Stafford resident who started the pass-the-parcel by giving the Van Gogh to a farmer as payment for work carried out is no longer with us.
Neither is the landowner who hung it in the nursery of his Staffordshire farmstead.
It was left to North London resident Luigi Grosso, who purchased the canvas in a junk shop for £45, to uncover its provenance.
He spotted the signature “Vincent” and called in experts. An X-ray revealed a sketch underneath the paint – an image of a man ploughing – which was definitely by the Dutch post impressionist.
In 1970, Southeby’s sold the painting for Grosso for around $100,000. It was bought by Hollywood producer Joseph Levine, the man behind such blockbusters as The Graduate, A Bridge Too Far and The Producers.
He sold the the painting in 1983 for $390,000.
It is a cash paper trail that has been followed closely by Ms Hulme, who was raised in Shifnal, Shropshire.
She was married to the son of John Holme, who ran Billington Farm, Stafford, and was given the artwork in 1929.
When he decided to sell the farmhouse lock, stock and barrel, Ms Hulme was asked to take her pick of anything she fancied prior to Bagshaws’ auction.
She liked the painting, but was dissuaded by Holme and wife Molly, who joked it was not worth having as it was dirty and damaged.
“Of course, in those days I couldn’t argue with them and ended up with a brass handbell,” she said.
This month, magazine Tatler described the dirty painting with a hole in it as: “One of the earliest Van Gogh paintings.
“Just as his talent was not recognised in his lifetime, so it was also overlooked in the 1960s.
“Painted four years before his death, in 1885, the possibility of it being an authentic Van Gogh was dismissed when it was sold by the Holme family in 1967.”