Newly surfaced Van Gogh deathbed sketch deepens the Gachet archive
An anonymous private archive tied to Dr. Paul Gachet has yielded a newly surfaced sketch of Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) on his deathbed, adding a rare piece to one of the most closely watched bodies of material connected to the artist’s final days. The owner of the Gachet Archive, who has asked to remain unnamed, granted full access to the collection, which includes drawings, prints, photographs, letters, and family records linked to Gachet and his son.
The most important object in the archive is a drawing titled “Van Gogh on his Deathbed.” Gachet was called to the inn where Van Gogh was staying a few hours after the artist shot himself in the chest on the evening of July 27, 1890. Van Gogh died in the early morning of July 29, with his brother Theo at his bedside. After examining the body, Gachet found charcoal and quickly made a deathbed sketch that did not soften the artist’s features. The drawing shows Van Gogh shaven, without his familiar beard, and from the left side of his head, where he had mutilated his ear in late 1888.
Two comparable deathbed drawings are already in museum collections. One, likely the original version, was kept by Gachet and later given by his son to the Louvre in 1951; it is now in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. The other was given to Theo in 1890 and is held by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. The newly emerged version in the archive remains securely framed and has not yet been fully studied.
The archive also contains a print made by Gachet after the sketch, a scarce etching that survives in only a small number of examples. Other material broadens the picture of the family’s artistic world. Gachet and his son, known as Gachet Jr or Gachet fils, were amateur artists who signed work as Paul van Ryssel and Louis van Ryssel, using the Flemish name for Lille, where the doctor was born. Gachet knew many Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, including Camille Pissarro and Paul Cezanne.
Among the more revealing documents is a 1923 folder compiled by Gachet Jr listing Van Gogh-related objects in the family collection. The archive also preserves a postcard sent by Jo Bonger from Amsterdam on August 10, 1914, just after the outbreak of the First World War, as well as a French version of her 1914 introduction to Van Gogh’s published letters, long regarded as one of the most detailed accounts of his life by someone who knew him.
Taken together, the archive shows how closely the Gachet family remained bound to Van Gogh’s legacy — and how much of that history still survives in private hands.
VanGogh PaulGachet ArtHistory Provenance MuseumCollections Impressionism
