At a star-studded auction in 1990, a painting was sold for the record-breaking price of $82.5 million. That painting, Vincent van Gogh's Portrait of Dr. Gachet, has seemed to countless admirers to portray our times as "something bright in spite of its inevitable griefs."This fascinating book reconstructs the painting's journey and becomes a rich story of modernist art and the forces behind the art market. Masterfully evoked are the lives of the thirteen extraordinary people who owned the painting and shaped its history: avant-garde European collectors, pioneering dealers in Paris and Berlin, a brilliant medievalist who acquired it for one of Germany's great museums, and a member of the Nazi elite who sold it after it had been confiscated as a work of "degenerate art." Remarkable and riveting, The Portrait of Dr. Gachet illuminates, in dramatic detail, the dynamics of the art market and of culture in our time.
- ISBN10 0140254870
- ISBN13 9780140254877
- Publish Date 1 April 1999
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 11 August 2009
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Penguin Putnam Inc
- Edition Open market ed
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 448
- Language English
- URL https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780140254877