Portrait of Dr. Gachet (2nd version)

Artist	van Gogh
Year	1890
Type	Oil on canvas
Dimensions	67 cm × 56 cm (23.4 in × 22.0 in)
Location	Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Portrait of Dr. Gachet (1st version)

Artist	Vincent van Gogh
Year	1890
Type	Oil on canvas
Dimensions	67 cm × 56 cm (23.4 in × 22.0 in)
Location	Private collection of Ryoei Saito(?)

Portrait of Dr. Gachet is one of the most revered paintings by Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh and fetched a record price of $82.5 million ($75 million, plus a 10 percent buyer's commission)^[1] in 1990.

There are two authentic versions of this portrait, both painted in June 1890 during the last months of Van Gogh's life. Both show Doctor Gachet sitting at a table and leaning his head onto his right arm, but they are easily differentiated.

[edit] Genesis

The portraits were painted in Auvers-sur-Oise close to Paris, and depict Doctor Paul Gachet with a foxglove plant. Gachet took care of Van Gogh during the artist's last months. Gachet was a hobby painter and became good friends with Van Gogh. The foxglove in the painting is a plant from which digitalis is extracted for the treatment of certain heart complaints; the foxglove is thereby an attribute of Gachet as a doctor.

[edit] Melancholy

Van Gogh's thoughts returned several times to the painting by Eugène Delacroix of Torquato Tasso in the madhouse. After a visit with Paul Gauguin to Montpellier to see Alfred Bruyas's collection in the Musée Fabre, Van Gogh wrote to his brother, Theo, asking if he could find a copy of the lithograph after the painting.^[2]. Three and a half months earlier, he had been thinking of the painting as an example of the sort of portraits he wanted to paint: "But it would be more in harmony with what Eugène Delacroix attempted and brought off in his Tasso in Prison, and many other pictures, representing a real man. Ah! portraiture, portraiture with the thought, the soul of the model in it, that is what I think must come."^[3]

Van Gogh wrote to his brother in 1890 about the painting:

[edit] Cultural use

The first version plays an important role in the crime novel Lifeguard (2005) by James Patterson and Andrew Gross.

[edit] Provenance

• The original version of this painting was sold by van Gogh's sister-in-law for 300 francs in 1897. Subsequently it was sold respectively to Paul Cassirer (1904), Kessler (1904), and Druet (1910). In 1911 the painting was acquired by the Städel (Städtische Galerie) in Frankfurt, Germany and hung there until 1933, when the painting was put in a hidden room. In 1937, it was confiscated by the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, an arm of the Nazi government that sought to rid pre-war Germany of so-called degenerate art. It came into the possession of Hermann Göring, who quickly sold it to a dealer in Amsterdam. The dealer in turn sold it to a collector, Siegfried Kramarsky, who brought it with him when he fled to New York, where the work was often lent to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Kramarsky's family put the painting up for auction in 1990. The painting became famous on May 15, 1990, when Japanese businessman Ryoei Saito paid US$82.5 million for it at auction in Christie's New York, making it the most expensive painting in the world up to that time. Saito, the honorary chairman of Daishowa Paper Manufacturing Co. and then 75 years old, caused a scandal when he said he would have the Van Gogh painting cremated with him after his death. He later said, "What I really wanted to [express] was my wish to preserve the paintings forever." Saito, his aides explained, was using a figure of speech, and his threatening to torch the masterpiece was just an expression of intense affection for it. Later he said he would consider giving the paintings to his government or a museum. After his death in 1996, the exact location and ownership of the portrait had been shrouded in mystery. In early 2007, however, reports[1] surfaced that the painting had been sold a decade earlier by Saito or his estate to the Austrian-born investment fund manager Wolfgang Flöttl. Flöttl, in turn, had reportedly been forced by financial reversals to sell the painting to parties as yet unknown.
• The second version of the portrait is in the possession of the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France.

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Saltzman, Cynthia: Portrait of Dr. Gachet. The Story of a van Gogh Masterpiece: Money, Politics, Collectors, Greed, and Loss, . ISBN 0-670-86223-1

[edit] External links

• U.S. News and World Report: Van Gogh's vanishing act

v • d • e Vincent van Gogh General Biography · Chronology · Medical condition · Posthumous fame · Cultural depictions · List of works · Post-Impressionism · Family Theo van Gogh · Wil van Gogh · Johanna van Gogh-Bonger · Andries Bonger · Theo van Gogh (film director) · Anton Mauve Friends Anthon van Rappard · Paul Gachet · Paul Gauguin · Émile Bernard · John Peter Russell · Eugène Boch · Anna Boch Groups of works Self-Portraits · Portraits · Flowering Orchards · The Décoration for the Yellow House · The Roulin Family · The Wheat Field · Copies after Millet, and others · Display at Les XX, 1890 · Auvers size 30 canvases · Auvers Double-squares and Squares Paintings The Potato Eaters · Sunflowers · The Night Café · The Yellow House · Cafe Terrace at Night · Starry Night Over the Rhone · The Bedroom · L'Arlésienne · The Red Vineyard · Les Arènes · View of Arles, Flowering Orchards · Ivy · The Starry Night · At Eternity's Gate · Irises · Portrait of Dr. Gachet · The Church at Auvers · Wheatfield with Crows · Daubigny's Garden · Thatched Cottages by a Hill · White House at Night Other works Drawings and water-colours · Prints Public collections Van Gogh Museum · Kröller-Müller Museum · Musée d'Orsay Wikimedia  van Gogh at Wiktionary ·  van Gogh at Wikibooks ·  van Gogh at Wikiquote ·  van Gogh at Wikisource ·  van Gogh at Commons ·  van Gogh at Wikinews