Sale of Portrait of Dr. Gachet

Date: May 15, 1990 • Location: Rome, Italy

Vincent van Gogh's Portrait of Dr. Gachet was sold at auction at Christie's in New York for US$82.5 million, making it the world's most expensive painting at the time.

Vincent Willem van Gogh was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade he created about 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of them in the last two years of his life. They include landscapes, still lifes, portraits and self-portraits, and are characterised by bold colours and dramatic, impulsive and expressive brushwork that contributed to the foundations of modern art. His suicide at age 37 followed years of mental illness and poverty.