News about Paul Gauguin

The night before Christmas Eve 1888, Paul ­Gauguin slipped out of the house he was ­sharing with Vincent Van Gogh to take a walk around the quiet streets of Arles. His mood was low. The light in the south of France might be conducive to painting, but his living conditions were unbearable. As the artist crossed the square, he heard quick, irregular footsteps. Turning, he saw Van Gogh rushing towards him with an open razor in his hand. 'My gaze at that moment must have been quite powerful, for he stopped and, lowering his head, set off running towards home,' Gauguin recalled. Later that night, Van Gogh used the same razor to chop off his own ear. For years afterwards, Gauguin would ask himself: might the outcome have been different if he had disarmed Van Gogh and tried to calm him down?

The Dutch artist's sunflowers are perhaps his best-known work, but he did make seven versions in his search for perfection, which have sold all over the world. Protesters from the Just Stop Oil campaign brought Heinz Tomato Soup to a halt today in the third iteration, which hangs in London's National Gallery. However, several other interpretations of the painting exist throughout the world, though one of them was destroyed in Japan during the Second World War.

In one of the largest art auctions in history, late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's billion dollar art collection will go under the hammer this November. Christie's said in a tweet that the fabled auction house would sell more than 150'masterpieces' from Allen's foundation. The collection spans more than 500 years of art history, although the work's value is more than $1 billion. The auction is titled: 'Visionary: The Paul G. Allen Collection'.' Allen died in October 2018 at the age of 65, as a result of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a rare form of cancer. He never married and had no children. Allen's net worth was estimated to be over $20 billion at the time of his death. Allen left the majority of his fortune to charity in 2010. This November, Christie's Rockefeller Center will host an auction. The correct date was not known.