Before Van Gogh Was a Painter, He Was an Art Dealer

Goupil & Co. Editors’ office in Place de l’Opéra, Paris. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Does a tormented artist a great art dealer make? If Vincent van Gogh’s turn at art dealing provides a model of any kind, the answer is no.

While the Dutch artist is known across the globe for his expressive paintings, troubled nature, and tragically short life, relatively few know Van Gogh entered the art world at the age of just 16 as an apprentice at the Hague branch of Goupil & Co., the art dealership where his uncle Cent (short for Vincent) was a partner. The experience nurtured a creative seed in the young man, bringing him into contact with Europe’s art centers and a wide range of work, and leading him to eventually take up painting himself, at age 27. And while he ultimately cared little for the market, his exposure to it informed how he marketed his work.

As a boy, Van Gogh had struggled to engage with his schooling. Impulsive, antisocial, and bursting with undirected energy, he had always been “hard work” for his parents, wrote Julian Bell in his biography of the artist, Van Gogh: A Power Seething. So Dorus (born Theodorus), a minister, and his wife, Anna, sent their son to his uncle’s firm to see if a taste of picture-peddling could instill a sense of purpose in the boy’s life.

For several years Van Gogh appeared to thrive, quickly becoming a junior assistant and providing administrative support to the more senior sales associates, and continuing to rise through the ranks. He began a personal collection of prints, photos, and engravings he obtained through the firm, which was known for its reproductions of works by European Salon artists and, later, a fairly conservative roster of painters. Surviving letters between Vincent and his younger brother Theo—who would also join Goupil in 1873—are packed with enthusiastic affirmations of the company’s work, as well as observations about artists he liked, and requests for Theo’s opinion on this or that artist.  

Yet there are signs from early in his career that his introverted character made him a liability in Goupil’s showrooms, in a profession where social graces go a long way towards closing a sale. This may well have been why, in 1873, what appeared to be a promotion for the 20-year-old Van Gogh—a move that took him to the company’s London branch—was also something of a demotion. In the industrial furnace of Victorian London, the firm had yet to properly establish itself. It didn’t have a gallery space like its branches in Paris, Brussels, and Hague, and its London business centered largely on the reproduction of its artworks into prints and photographs.