Cleveland Museum of Art

Dr. Gachet

Vincent van Gogh

Date

1890

Medium

Etching and drypoint, enhanced with black ink on laid paper

Culture

Netherlands

Department

Prints

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

This portrait of Dr. Paul Gachet, made just two months before the artist’s death, is the only etching that Vincent van Gogh created. Van Gogh placed himself under the care of Gachet in Auvers-sur-Oise, a small village on the northern outskirts of Paris, at the recommendation of fellow artist Camille Pissarro. The doctor was himself an amateur printmaker and gave Van Gogh a varnished copper plate, helping him print it on his own small hand press. For his first attempt, Van Gogh depicted Gachet seated in his garden smoking a pipe. Van Gogh’s brother Theo wrote of this print, “It’s a real painter’s etching. No refinement in the procedure, but a drawing done on metal.”

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