In 1888, while living in Arles, France, Vincent van Gogh painted The Park at Arles with the Entrance Seen Through the Trees. Following Vincent’s death in July 1890, ownership of the painting passed through a number of hands until it found its way to a private residence in Berlin, Germany in 1928. Unfortunately, the trail ends in Berlin, where the painting was presumably destroyed by fire during World War II. Today, only a black and white image of the painting remains. However, in a letter to his brother Theo, Vincent provides some hint of what has been lost to history:
[N]ature here is extraordinarily beautiful. Everything and everywhere. The dome of the sky is a wonderful blue, the sun has a pale sulphur radiance, and it’s soft and charming, like the combination of celestial blues and yellows in paintings by Vermeer of Delft. . . . But my colours, my canvas, my wallet are completely exhausted today. The last painting, done with the last tubes on the last canvas, is a naturally green garden, is painted without green as such, with nothing but Prussian blue and chrome yellow.1
Still, not all hope is lost—and the underlying premise of The Van Gogh Deception remains sound. As recently as 2014, tax collectors in Spain found a van Gogh painting that had been missing for decades in a safety deposit box. Perhaps one day The Park at Arles with the Entrance Seen Through the Trees will likewise re-emerge.
A big thanks to Anita Homan, documentalist at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, for her assistance in tracing the provenance of the painting. And a big thanks as well to Elizabeth Thorne and Katie Forsyth of Brookstone School in Columbus, Georgia for their assistance with a tricky French translation. Merci beaucoup.