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Portrait of Dr. Guichet (Version One) by Vincent van Gogh (1890)

1890. Oil on canvas. 22" high by 23.4" wide.  Collection: Private collection of Ryoei Saito(?).

Portrait of Dr. Gachet is one of the most revered paintings by Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh. It depicts Dr. Paul Gachet, who took care of him during the final months of his life. It was the only portrait painted by van Gogh during his stay at the doctor's home in Auvers-sur-Oise (27.2 km outside Paris), a 70 day period from May to July 1890. 

In 1990, it fetched a then-record price of $82.5 million ($75 million, plus a 10 percent buyer's commission) when sold at auction in New York.

There are two authenticated versions of the portrait, both painted in June 1890 at Auvers. Both show Doctor Gachet sitting at a table and leaning his head onto his right arm, but they are easily differentiated in color and style.

Background
In 1890, Van Gogh's brother Theo was searching for a home for the artist upon his release from the hospital at Saint-Rémy. Upon the recommendation of Camille Pissarro, former patient of the doctor who told Theo of Gachet's interests in working with artists, Theo sent Vincent to Gachet's second home in Auvers.

Vincent Van Gogh's impression of Gachet at times was unfavorable, writing to Theo: "I think that we must not count on Dr. Gachet at all. First of all, he is sicker than I am, I think, or shall we say just as much, so that's that. Now when one blind man leads another blind man, don't they both fall into the ditch?" However, a letter dated two days later to their sister Wilhelmina, he relayed, "I have found a true friend in Dr. Gachet, something like another brother, so much do we resemble each other physically and also mentally." It is perhaps with this affection van Gogh decided to paint his doctor's portrait.

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 Theo, asking if he could find a copy of the lithograph after the painting. 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."

Van Gogh wrote to his brother in 1890 about the painting:
“I've done the portrait of M. Gachet with a melancholy expression, which might well seem like a grimace to those who see it... Sad but gentle, yet clear and intelligent, that is how many portraits ought to be done... There are modern heads that may be looked at for a long time, and that may perhaps be looked back on with longing a hundred years later.”

Van Gogh painted Gachet resting his right elbow on a red table, head in hand. Two yellow books as well as the purple medicinal herb foxglove are displayed on the table. The foxglove in the painting is a plant from which digitalis is extracted for the treatment of certain heart complaints, perhaps an attribute of Gachet as a doctor.

Exhibition
First sold in 1897 by van Gogh's sister-in-law for 300 francs, the painting was subsequently bought by 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. The Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda confiscated the work in 1937 as part of its campaign to rid Germany of so-called degenerate art, leading to Hermann Göring hurriedly selling it to a dealer in Amsterdam. The dealer in turn sold it to 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 at Christie's New York on May 15, 1990, where it became famous for Ryoei Saito, honorary chairman of Daishowa Paper Manufacturing Co., paying US$82.5 million for it, making it then the world's most expensive painting. The 75-year old Japanese businessman briefly caused a scandal when he said he would have the Van Gogh painting cremated with him after his death, though his aides later claimed Saito threatening to torch the masterpiece was just an expression of intense affection for it.

Though he later said he would consider giving the painting to the Japanese government or a museum, no information has been made public about the exact location and ownership of the portrait since his death in 1996. Reports in 2007 have claimed the painting was sold a decade earlier 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.
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Viewed: Apr 20, 2024
Updated: Feb 12, 2024
Priced: Aug 07, 2022
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