#Van Gogh letter about his brothel visits fetches $236K at auction

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Vincent Van Gogh’s painting “Self Portrait with a Straw Hat.”
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Even dead painters aren’t safe from having their dirty texts unearthed and aired publicly.

A letter written by 19th-century artists Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin highlighting their steamy brothel visits has sold for approximately $236,000. The four-page correspondence was purchased Tuesday by the Vincent van Gogh Foundation in Paris, and will be displayed at their Amsterdam museum, reports Reuters.

The painting pioneers had penned the historical sext, which has been described “exceptional,” to French painter Émile Bernard in late 1888 during their stay in Arles, France, according to the Guardian.

“Now something that will interest you — we’ve made some excursions in the brothels, and it’s likely that we’ll eventually go there often to work,” reads the lusty letter.

Van Gogh adds in the letter that Frenchman Gauguin had a work in progress depicting the same night cafe that he’d painted except “with figures seen in the brothels.” “It promises to become a beautiful thing,” muses the Dutch legend, who has famously featured prostitutes in many of his paintings.

However, like a bathroom stall inscribed with Shakespeare quotes, the risque rhetoric is seamlessly intertwined with astute observations about modern art trends.

“Their artistic dialogue was unstoppable in those days,” says the Vincent van Gogh Foundation, which dubbed the letter the most important document by van Gogh not in a museum, as it was his sole correspondence with Gauguin. They added that it “gives a visionary picture of their artistic cooperation and the future of modern art.”

In the illuminating manuscript, the Dutchman even compliments Gauguin, describing his fellow visionary as “an unspoiled creature with the instincts of a wild beast” with whom “blood and sex have the edge over ambition.”

Gauguin playfully teases his friend in response: “Do not listen to Vincent, he is, as you know, easy to impress and ditto to be indulgent.”

Unfortunately, van Gogh left Arles after two months, allegedly due to chopping off his ear during a mental breakdown. That ear, fittingly enough, was supposedly gifted to a courtesan at a local bordello.