The search for van Gogh’s lost masterpiece

Once the most expensive painting in the world, Van Gogh's "Portrait of Dr. Gachet," has mysteriously disappeared after it was sold in 1990. Now, where is it?

When the hammer fell at Christie’s in Manhattan on May 15, 1990, a Vincent van Gogh painting, “Portrait of Dr Gachet,” set the record at the time for the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction, going to a Japanese paper magnate for $82.5 million.

Painted in the garden of the artist’s physician in June 1890, it was completed just weeks before van Gogh’s suicide by gunshot. The sense of melancholy radiating from the doctor conveys, van Gogh wrote to his friend Paul Gauguin, the heartbroken expression of our time. Considered to be among his masterpieces, it may now be worth $300 million, or more, experts say.

For much of the 20th century, “Portrait of Dr Gachet” was prominently displayed at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt, Germany, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, to which it was lent by a private collector before the 1990 sale.

But it has all but disappeared since that day at Christie’s, and its whereabouts has become one of the art world’s greatest mysteries. Curators putting together van Gogh shows have thrown up their hands at finding it. The Städel Museum, where it once hung, commissioned an entire podcast designed to ferret out its location.

Art sleuths over the years have confirmed this much: that the Japanese buyer from 1990 was soon undone by scandal. His collection was sold by a bank and the Gachet was acquired by an Austrian financier who soon found that he too could not afford to keep it.

In 1998, the van Gogh was sold privately to an undisclosed party. Since then the trail has run cold. At least publicly.

While the art market thrives on secrecy and protects privacy as a matter of honor, it also employs people whose mission is to collect reliable information on who owns what. Some are auction house representatives, others art advisers or dealers who have made a specific genre their special niche.

Many theories have been put forth over the years regarding the Gachet's ownership. 

In 2019, Stefan Koldehoff, a German art reporter, said that the current owner of Sotheby's was referred to as "The Lugano Man."