An Ear For Art

An early painting by Vincent Van Gogh, seen above in a self-portrait, of a gloomy country cottage and a peasant woman sold at auction Tuesday in Amsterdam, Netherlands, for $693,000, almost three times higher than predicted. The small oil on canvas, “Cottage,” had been valued from $160,000 to $250,000, much lower than masterpieces from the artist’s later periods, which fetch tens of millions of dollars. The work was created in 1885, the early days of Van Gogh’s career, when he painted the daily activities of peasants and workers in southern Netherlands.