费利克斯·雷医生的肖像

Van Gogh painted this in January 1889, only weeks after he cut off part of his own left ear in Arles. Felix Rey was the young house doctor at the hospital there who cleaned and dressed the wound, and Van Gogh made the portrait as a gift, a thank-you. The green and red patterning behind the doctor's head is pure Van Gogh, but the sitter and his family were not charmed. They thought it a poor likeness. Rey's mother is said to have used the canvas for years to block a hole in the family chicken coop, and the Reys later stored it away and turned down the offer of a second try. In 1901 the painter Charles Camoin tracked Rey down, heard the story, and bought the picture. It travelled from there into the collection of the Russian textile magnate Ivan Morozov, and after the revolution into the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, where it hangs today, one of the works those young doctors nearly lost for good.