|Portrait of Dr. Gachet, June, 1890, |
Vincent van Gogh
After the doctor's death in 1897, a Danish art collector named Alice Ruben purchased the painting for the equivalent of $58. In 1890, coincidentally almost exactly 100 years after the artist's death, a Japanese businessman purchased the same painting for the astounding price of $82.5 million. Between these two events is a twisted trail of disreputable art dealers, museum politics, the Nazi war on "degenerate art", and refugees from the Holocaust trying to save both themselves and the painting. Add to this a more recent history of greedy buyers and sellers caring only to turn a fast buck on the painting as its value soared beyond all reason, and you have a case book study of everything wrong with the art market for the last hundred years. Sadly, today, this touching masterpiece resides, unseen, crated up, stored for safekeeping in a Japanese warehouse.
Note: Van Gogh's Dr. Gachet has now moved into second place as the most expensive painting in history. Its place was taken by Gustave Klimt's Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer which sold in 2006 for $135 million.
|Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, 1907,|