Portrait of Dr. Gachet

Van Gogh painted Doctor Paul Gachet twice in June 1890, at Auvers-sur-Oise, in the last weeks of his life. The first version, with two yellow novels on the table, is in private hands. This second one stayed in the doctor's house. His children, Paul and Marguerite, gave it to the French state in 1949. That family history is what later made some scholars uneasy. Gachet and his son copied pictures themselves, and Van Gogh's letters never mention painting the doctor twice, so several specialists came to doubt this canvas, while the Orsay's curators held it to be genuine. Laboratory study gave them a telling detail. The sprig of foxglove, the plant that yields the heart drug digitalis, was laid in with a red lake and ultramarine. The red has faded, which is why the flowers now look bluish, and a watercolour copy made in 1901 still shows them purple.