The Portrait of Dr. Gachet: The Story of a van Gogh Masterpiece by Cynthia Saltzman
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This starts where Smith and White's biography of VVGogh ends; it's the story of  van Gogh's portrait of his doctor, one of his final works. Saltzman tells how it grew in value, until it was sold for an astounding $82.5 million to a Japanese businessman who was planning a golf community named after van Gogh. Unfortunately, he was found guilty of bribery and died. At the end of the book the painting is wrapped and stored --the property of maybe his family or maybe his creditors. The book was published in 1998. My quick Google search did not reveal what happened after that.

Truthfully, I skipped the boring parts. This book did not speak to me deeply, but it does illuminate the relationship between finance and art, and it makes me wonder what happened to the value of all van Gogh's other work. There's something troubling in the whole thing.


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