Portrait of Dr. Gachet The Story of a van Gogh Masterpiece (Modernism, Money, Politics, Dealers, Taste, Greed and Loss)

By Cynthia Saltzman,

Book cover of Portrait of Dr. Gachet The Story of a van Gogh Masterpiece (Modernism, Money, Politics, Dealers, Taste, Greed and Loss)

Book description

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…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Portrait of Dr. Gachet The Story of a van Gogh Masterpiece (Modernism, Money, Politics, Dealers, Taste, Greed and Loss) as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Michael Findlay

Author

This journey of a masterpiece through the hands of some of the most memorable characters of the twentieth century is more than art history, for me, it illuminated the motives, pure and impure, of collectors from Paris to Tokyo and the turbulent times in which they lived.

This tale of one painting by a great artist of a very peculiar patron provides an amazing journey from late nineteenth-century Paris to Amsterdam in the 1920s to Nazi Germany to late twentieth-century New York and, finally Tokyo. I make a cameo appearance towards the end.

From Michael's list on making modern art exciting.