NATION : 7 Art Works for Van Gogh’s ‘Roulin’

The Museum of Modern Art agreed to sell two Picassos, a Monet, a Renoir and three other paintings from its permanent collection to get Vincent van Gogh’s portrait of the postman Joseph Roulin, the New York Times reported today.

The portrait, painted in 1888-89, arrived at the museum from a bank vault in Zurich on July 31. For much of this century, the painting was in the B. Mayer collection in Zurich. It was bought in 1987 by the most recent owners and placed in the bank vault.

Christopher Burge, president of Christie’s in New York, estimated recently that “Roulin” would be worth roughly the same at auction as Van Gogh’s “Irises,” which brought $53.9 million in 1987.

Kirk Varnedoe, director of painting and sculpture at the Modern, said the museum got “Roulin” for substantially less than that because the unidentified owners wanted it to hang in a museum. Still, he said, the price was “not a raging fire-sale bargain.”

At first, Varnedoe said, museum officials didn’t think they could afford the Van Gogh. But “because of changes in the art market, pictures we had available were worth more than we had thought they were worth, and so it now seemed possible.”