The Old Port of Marseille
From the Whatifs Catalogue, the encyclopedia of paintings that never were. Lot of the day on Oct 17.
Created with AI, after Vincent van Gogh, public domain.
The Old Port of Marseille is an imagined painting attributed, within the Whatifs fiction, to Vincent van Gogh (1888). It belongs to the Whatifs series of works the great masters never painted.
History and rediscovery
Van Gogh dreamed of painting Marseille, "Monticelli's city". He was believed never to have gone. A travel note found in 2023 proves a two-day escape from Arles; the painting, traded for a night at a hotel, spent the century above a bar counter in the Panier district.
Sale
Within the fiction, the painting sold for $118,000,000 (2025). Tap the board above to replay the imagined bidding. The auction pictured below never took place.
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See also
- The Painter from Behind, Without a Model, Johannes Vermeer
- Judith, the Morning After, Artemisia Gentileschi
- The Dancer Who Leaves, Edgar Degas
Notes
- Image generated with AI from a prompt written by Whatifs. No real painting, signature or auction house is reproduced.
- Story written for Whatifs. Any resemblance to real discoveries is coincidental.
