Customer Reviews
From $0 To $82,500,000 
2000-09-14
While reading about the history of the Sotheby's and Christie's Auction Houses the story of the highest priced paid for a painting at auction was quite a tale. I qualify my comment with an auction sale, as the possibility exists that somewhere an individual may have spent more. Based on what I have read I doubt it, for even with all the deception in the art world, secrets are not particularly well kept.
Ms. Cynthia Saltzman has written a scholarly work that is readable by anyone who enjoys well-written history, or even a novel. The course this painting has taken in a bit more than 110 years is as extraordinary as the price paid when it was last sold.
Vincent Van Gogh was a troubled man who managed to produce a rather large body or work before tragically taking his own life. There are dozens of speculations as to the manner of disease he suffered, but suffer he did. Van Gogh did not live to see any appreciation of his art, and even for years after his death his work was not of any renown nor sought after. This final portrait that he was to paint did not sell for 7 years after his death, and even then the purchase price was $58 in US currency.
Over the next 14 years the painting would again change hands 4 more times, and with the last of the 4 sales became a museum piece for the first time. The locale was Frankfurt, the year 1911, and the price $3861. It was this last move that was to place this painting and hundreds of others into a collection of Art deemed "degenerate" by the Nazis of Hitler's Germany. The piece also was in the possession of Herman Goering briefly. Fortunately for the painting it was sold outside of Germany, where a new owner would hold it for the next 52 years. The Germans may have thought it degenerate for propaganda purposes, but money was another matter. While the painting was confiscated, when sold in 1938 the passing 17 years brought the value to $20,000.
Until the next and final sale the painting would be hung in a home in New York City, the property of private collectors. When the "crazy years" of the art market arrived impressionist work was in great demand, much of which was generated from Japan. For in 1995 Mr. Saito paid $82.5 million, and then 2 days later another $78.5 million was spent by the same man on a Renoir. What has happened since then really has to be read as it would make a great novel were it fiction.
Ms. Saltzman has done an amazing job of documentary work, and added the history of the times surrounding the work, as well as those who sought the piece, and the personalities of those who came in contact with, or were the temporary custodians of the work, "The Gachet".
A wonderful read for anyone who enjoys a good story written with consummate skill and style.
Portrait of Dr. Gachet:The story of a Van Gogh 2000-02-18
It was very interesting story for me to know this masterpiece's history. However, it was too much skipped the history in Japanese period and sometimes I did feel that she has a prejudice against Japanese culture. She investigated history in Europe very well but less investigation in Japan ! I wanted her to investigate it more. Anyway, it was very interesting and I want to recommend it very much.
Hey, Starry Night would go for 100,000,000$! 
1999-08-13
She veers off into things that really don't pertain to the needed info about Vincent V. Too much like a history lesson on WW2! How about some info on other masterpieces and there values like, is Starry night worth more than Dr.Gachet? Some art experts put it over that and the value of the Mona Lisa(125,000,000!)Also where is the painting at now and go into why Saito kept it away from the public!?The book in my opinion was done too early!Hey, why don't I write the sequel I could do alot better job in my opinion!
An All-Time Favorite 
1999-05-21
The history of a single work of art from conception, several owners, war, and fame as the record-holder for highest price for a painting at auction, this book is nothing short of amazing. Cynthia Saltzman's concept is fresh and her writing ludcid. This is a book you won't be able to put down. It has everything a good story should have; suspense, tragedy, triumph, and action. I found myself holding my breath, though I knew the outcome, as I read about the auction of the Portrait of Dr. Gachet.
This is a book I heartily recommend, and so far, everyone I've leant it to or purchased it for has loved it just as much as I have.
Melancholy Portrait Still Provoking Response 1998-09-11
The stories of the owners and caretakers of the portrait, from its beginning to present, create a colorful tapestry of their own. For someone who is not intimate with the negotiations of the art world, the book is informative and surprising. It may not have been the author's intention, but I also felt a thread of sadness and melancholy, as though the artist and the subject still have an investment in the future of the canvas. Perhaps it is the awareness that all the owners eventually gave it up and that the current owner has removed it from sight. The author of this book has given us the facts, but has also invested those facts with meaning which speaks clearly about the impact of the artistic process, if one is willing to consider beyond the obvious.
excellent 1998-06-10
In 1990, at a star-studded auction, a painting was sold for the astonishing price of $82.5 million--a record-breaking price. That painting, Portrait of Dr. Gachet, was one of Vincent van Gogh's last. Painted exactly one hundred years earlier, this revolutionary and haunting painting has seemed to countless admirers to portray modern life, in van Gogh's words, 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. Shortly before the war, the canvas was sent to America before its owner, a Jewish refugee, fled Europe. A remarkable and riveting read in the tradition of Lynn Nicholas's The Rape of Europa, Portrait of Dr. Gachet illuminates, in dramatic detail, the dynamics of the art market and of culture in our time.
