Did Van Gogh really sell only one painting?

No: Van Gogh sold more than one painting, but not by much, and he died almost unknown. The famous "only one sale" is The Red Vineyard, bought for 400 francs by the Belgian painter Anna Boch at a Brussels exhibition in 1890. It is simply the only painting known by name that he sold. The Van Gogh Museum says nobody knows the exact number, but it was more than a couple: his uncle Cor, an art dealer, ordered 19 cityscapes of The Hague, the Paris paint dealer Julien Tanguy bought one, and his brother Theo sold another to a London gallery. Vincent also swapped works with other artists, and when he was young, for food or paint.

Still, he was a commercial failure. In just over a decade he made about 2,100 artworks, most in his last two years, and lived largely on money sent by Theo. Theo, himself an art dealer, told him his early paintings were too dark to sell. Recognition was only starting, with a critic calling him "a genius" in January 1890, when he died that July.

His fame was built afterwards, largely by one person: Theo's widow, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger. Left with about 200 then-worthless works, she lent them to exhibitions, sold some carefully and published the brothers' letters. In 1990, a portrait she had sold for 300 francs fetched $82.5 million.