Portrait of Dr. Gachet

Van Gogh painted at least two versions of Dr Paul Gachet at Auvers-sur-Oise in June 1890, and this second version — with its complex provenance through Nazi confiscation of 'degenerate art' — differs from the first (sold in 1990 for a record $82.5 million) primarily in palette and detail rather than composition. Dr Gachet was himself a remarkable figure: a physician who had treated several artists, was friends with Pissarro and Cézanne, practiced etching as an amateur, and collected avant-garde paintings. Van Gogh described him as 'heartbroken' — using the exact phrase he repeated in a letter to Theo — and saw in his melancholic bearing a mirror of his own condition: a sensitive man oppressed by the age's spiritual emptiness. The foxglove sprig Gachet holds was both a cardiac medication Van Gogh associated with his physician and a symbol of the unresolvable connection between remedy and poison, care and control, that his relationship with Gachet embodied. The Nazi seizure and subsequent complex ownership history makes this one of the most emblematic examples of twentieth-century art's political entanglement.

The doctor's blue coat stands against a pale blue-green background, painted with confident directional impasto. The foxglove sprig in his hand — a cardiac medication that Van Gogh associated with melancholia — is rendered with delicate detail. The face receives the most concentrated attention: built up with layered strokes that model the haunted, downcast expression Van Gogh aimed to capture.