The Portrait of Dr. Gachet: Story Van Gogh's Last Portrait Modernism Money Polits Collectors Dealers Taste G

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, Portrait of Dr. Gachet illuminates, in dramatic detail, the dynamics of the art market and of culture in our time.

Provenance

The Canvas

Prologue: Sacred and Profane

I. "The Heartbroken Expression of Our Time"

1. Van Gogh: Dealer, Preacher, and Painter, 1853-1886

2. Paris, 1886-1887

3. Arles, 1888-1889

4. Saint-Rémy, May 8, 1889-May 16, 1890

5. Auvers: Paul-Ferdinand Gachet, 1890

6. The Portrait of Dr. Gachet

II. Northern Europe and the First Modernist Collectors

The International Avant-Garde and the Market

7. Paris: Theo van Gogh, 1891

8. Amsterdam: Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, 1891-1896

9. Copenhagen: The Danish Secession, 1893

10. Paris: Ambrois Vollard, 1897

11. Copenhagen: Alice Ruben, 1897-1904

12. Copenhagen: Mogens Ballin, 1897-1904

III. The "Other" Germany

Modern Art, German Nationalism, and the Making of the Modern Museum

13. Berlin: Paul Cassirer, 1904

14. Weimar: Harry Kessler, 1904-1908

15. Frankfurt: The Old Master Museum and the New Portrait, 1911-1919

16. Frankfurt: Museum Masterpiece, 1920-1933

IV. Modern Art and the Third Reich

Propaganda, Confiscation, and Export

17. Frankfurt: "Degenerate Art," 1933-1938

18. Berlin: Hermann Göring and Foreign Currency, 1938

19. Amsterdam: Passage to Exile—Franz Koenigs and Sigfried Kramarsky, 1938-1940

V. Postwar New York

20. New York: Refugee, 1941

21. "Exactly How Great a Painter Was He?" 1950s-1970s

22. Postwar Frankfurt

VI. The 1980s

23. The Metropolitan Museum and the New van Gogh, 1984-1990

24. The Sunflowers, 1987

25. Museum to Auction, February to May 14, 1990

26. Portrait of Melancholy at Auction, May 15, 1990

VII. Japan

27. 12.4 Billion Yen

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index