Dr. Gachet's House and the Painter Named Van Ryssel

Visiting this house, you may think first of Van Gogh, but some will recall Paul Cézanne's painting House of Dr. Gachet. It was painted with this very house as its subject, and if you go in and climb to the left, you can still find traces of it. Admission is free. Only a small part of the interior is open to visitors, but the exterior views and the panorama over the village are spectacular.

Dr. Gachet ran a hospital in Paris at the time, but moved here for the sake of his ailing wife and commuted to the hospital, half an hour away by train. Van Gogh's Portrait of Dr. Gachet is the most expensive portrait he ever painted to be sold. Against a flatly coloured blue background, he rendered the hat precisely with a brown window, a yellow cord and pale tones, and brought it to life with dynamic brushstrokes. Striking colours, such as auburn hair and an ultramarine coat, convey Gachet's passionate character. Gachet was a homeopathy specialist, which is why the sitter holds a medicinal herb, foxglove, in his hand. While practising as a doctor in Paris, he also ran a private clinic in Auvers. He was Van Gogh's physician, and treated many other painters as well, among them Pissarro, Manet, Cézanne and Renoir.

How could so many famous painters see the same doctor? In his youth Gachet befriended artists such as Courbet and Daumier, and perhaps as a result he painted himself and became a well-known collector of Impressionist work in Europe. Art became the bond that naturally drew painters to him as patients. After settling in Auvers, Pissarro introduced Theo to Gachet, and Theo entrusted his brother Vincent to his care. A patron of the Impressionists, Dr. Paul Gachet welcomed Van Gogh into his home, became both his doctor and his friend, and even volunteered to be his model. Theo trusted that, as a painter who had treated many painters, Gachet would take good care of his brother too. After Van Gogh met his tragic end, Gachet was summoned by the police, but no one in Van Gogh's family accused him or held him responsible.

Interestingly, in one of Van Gogh's notes on Gachet, he wrote, "Dr. Gachet seems to me sicker than I am." Gachet himself reportedly did suffer from depression. Perhaps Van Gogh, who struggled with depression, recognised from the start that Gachet lived with an even deeper one. The two got along reasonably well, though it is also said that when Van Gogh took a liking to Gachet's daughter, Marguerite, and grew close to her, Gachet's attitude turned cold.

Gachet was a collector and a painter, and had two children, Marguerite and Paul-Louis. His son Paul-Louis became an art dealer, inherited all of his father's collection along with his paintings, and donated them to France before his death. As a result, many of the works Gachet painted himself are now in the Louvre. But they are genuinely hard to find there, because Gachet signed his work with the name Paul van Ryssel. If you want to see Dr. Gachet's paintings at the Louvre, look for the name Van Ryssel.