When the hammer fell at Christie’s in Manhattan on May 15, 1990, a Vincent van Gogh painting, Portrait of Dr. Gachet, at the time the record for the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction. $82.5 million.
It was painted in the garden of the artist’s doctor in June 1890 and 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.” It is considered one of his masterpieces and could now be worth US$300 million (US$400 million) or more, experts say.
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