Doctor Paul Gachet - Psychiatrist and Collector

The story of Dr. Gachet remains a true inspiration for every budding collector to this day.

Mention Paul Gachet today, and the first thing that comes to mind is Vincent van Gogh's portrait of the doctor – an extraordinarily valuable work of art that was bought at auction in 1990, for a then-record $82.5 million, by Japanese billionaire Ryoei Saito (the owner died six years later, and the painting's whereabouts remain unknown to this day).

As it happens, the portrait is more famous than its subject, though entirely undeservedly – Paul Gachet's own story is worth telling in its own right. One might ask what exciting prospects a small-town doctor could possibly have. It turns out he was destined to amass a collection of Expressionist and Impressionist works worthy of MoMA, and eventually... even copies he painted himself of works by van Gogh and Cézanne were exhibited alongside pieces by the recognized masters.

So how did he manage it?

Vincent van Gogh, "Dr. Paul Gachet", 1890. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

As already mentioned, Gachet was a physician who wrote his thesis on melancholy and specialized in psychiatry, but throughout his life he also painted as an amateur; in his youth he sat in Parisian cafés with Baudelaire, Manet and Courbet, and later he mixed with several lesser-known painters and collected their work. Even so, his collection only grew substantially after he moved to Auvers-sur-Oise in 1872 and became the Pissarro family's doctor. At the time, Auvers-sur-Oise was home to a small artists' colony where Camille Pissarro, Paul Cézanne and Armand Guillaumin worked. The doctor lived surrounded by artists (it is said he more than once traded medicine for their work), and he heard with his own ears how Cézanne mocked Manet's "Olympia" and, as a joke, painted "A Modern Olympia (sketch)". Ever the shrewd operator, Gachet bought the painting on the spot and later lent it to the Impressionist exhibition, thereby going down in history as one of the earliest admirers of the modernists.

Camille Pissarro, "Cottages at Auvers-sur-Oise", 1873. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

The year 1889 proved fateful for Gachet as a collector – Theo van Gogh approached Pissarro asking him to find a place where his brother Vincent, once he left the Saint-Rémy psychiatric asylum, could live independently. Pissarro immediately thought of Dr. Gachet, who could also look after the painter's health. And so, on 20 May 1890, van Gogh moved into a flat above a café next to the town hall and quickly became friends with the doctor and his family. The painter spent about six weeks in Auvers, during which he produced more than 70 works (an almost unbelievable output), and most of them ended up in the doctor's collection alongside works by Cézanne and other famous painters – but the story does not end there. When Gachet himself died in 1909, the paintings passed to his children, Marguerite and Paul (a reclusive scholar who spent almost his entire life writing about van Gogh's final days in Auvers), and no one saw them again for 40 years. Only after Marguerite's death did the paintings finally go to the Musée d'Orsay.

Paul Cézanne, "Dr. Paul Gachet's House in Auvers", 1873. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

This is where another problem arose – the collection included 14 watercolor self-portraits by van Gogh and dozens of Cézanne's green apples. It turned out that Gachet himself, his children, and several hired amateurs had painted numerous copies of works by Pissarro, Renoir, Cézanne and van Gogh. At one point, the sheer number of copies even cast doubt on the authenticity of the entire collection, but thorough research helped establish attribution.

And so, in 1999 in New York, something happened that Gachet could not even have dreamed of – his own paintings were exhibited alongside the very masters he had so admired.

Vincent van Gogh, "Marguerite Gachet in the Garden", 1890. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Vincent van Gogh, "Dr. Paul Gachet's Garden in Auvers", 1890. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Paul Cézanne, "Dr. Gachet's House in Auvers-sur-Oise", 1873. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)