Thread by @PekingMike

THREAD: The incredible parallels - spanning 133 years -- between two van Gogh paintings. Something @QianIsabelle @muyixiao @vwang3 and I discovered writing this story about one of them, "Still Life, Vase with Daisies and Poppies" (1/x) nytimes.com/2023/05/29/wor…

The other painting in this tale is "Portrait of Dr. Gachet," one of van Gogh's masterpieces, which hasn't been seen by the public for a third of a century. (2/x)

The paintings were completed within two weeks of each other in June 1890 at Dr. Gachet's home in Auvers-sur-Oise, a village outside of Paris. Van Gogh only had weeks to live but was in the midst of one of his most productive periods as a painter. (3/x)

Until WWII, the provenance of "Portrait of Dr. Gachet" was far more dramatic, with the painting being snatched from its home at a Frankfurt Museum by the Nazis. But then it found its way to the USA, where it spent many years on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NY. (4/x)

Meanwhile, "Still Life, Vase with Daisies and Poppies" was acquired by an American, A Conger Goodyear, one of the founders of MoMA. For decades, it was at Buffalo's Albright Knox Art Gallery, which had been gifted a portion of the painting by Goodyear's son, George. (5/x)

This is where things start getting weird. In 1990, "Dr. Gachet" was at the Met, the still life was at Albright-Knox. By the end of the year, both were gone, disappeared, with one dramatically sold off at an auction at Christie's, the other one vanishing in a private sale. (6/x)

"Portrait of Dr. Gachet" sold for $82.5 million at Christie's in May, 1990. It was the most EVER paid for a work of art at auction, a record that held for more than a decade. It made the front page of the New York Times. (7/x) nytimes.com/1990/05/16/art…

"Still Life, Vase with Daisies and Poppies" went to auction at Christie's in November, 1990, but by then, the crashing Japanese stock market and the recession sparked by Iraq's invasion of Kuwait had delivered a gut punch to the art market. It failed to sell. (8/x)

The estate of the man who brought "Dr. Gachet" to America wanted to sell - tax law changes made it less attractive to donate the painting to a museum. As for the still life, George Goodyear, still a partial owner, wanted to sell it to raise money for another Buffalo museum. (9/x)

After the failed Christie's auction, the van Gogh still life was sold to an anonymous private buyer. The person dispatched two people to Buffalo, and they took the boxed up painting away. It wasn't to surface again for nearly 24 years. (10/x)

Meanwhile, "Dr. Gachet" went to a Japanese industrialist, Ryoei Saito. But he was soon enmeshed - and conficted - in a bribery scandal. He died in 1996. (11/x)

Saito was CONVICTED in a bribery scandal and so too was the Chinese billionaire behind the 2014 purchase of "Still Life Vase with Daisies and Poppies." That man, Xiao Jianhua, is serving a 13-year sentence for bribery. (12/x)

Both paintings were on long-term loans or part of museum collections until 1990. Both fell into the hands of billionaires later convicted of bribery. Both are gone - once able to be enjoyed by the public, now their whereabouts are a mystery. (13/x)

THIS IS NOT NORMAL. These paintings belong to a group of about 400 oil-on-canvas paintings completed by van Gogh in the last two years of his life, from the time he left Paris for the south of France in early 1888 until his death in July 1890. MOST ARE IN MUSEUMS. (14/x)

In fact, only about 15% of the 400-odd works are in private hands and not regularly loaned out to museums. The vast majority are at places like the Met, the Musee d'Orsay in Paris, the Tate Gallery in London and, especially, the Van Gogh Museum in the Netherlands. (15/x)

But these paintings are GONE. They aren't being leant to museums for exhibits by their unknown private owners. The "buyer" of the still life at the 2014 Sotheby's auction did put the painting on display for few months at a Beijing museum in 2017, but now it has vanished. (16/x)

Contrast that with the anonymous buyer who paid $117 million at a Christie's auction last year for the late-period van Gogh "Orchard with Cypresses." He/she LENT THE PAINTING TO THE MET for its fabulous Van Gogh's Cypresses exhibit. Here is a photo I took yesterday. (17/x)

Think what you will of Larry Ellison, but he lent his van Gogh, "Farmhouse Among Olive Trees," to the Met for the exhibition as well. So left-handed golfer's clap for Mr. Ellison, everyone! Several other private collectors also lent their van Goghs. (18/x)

By the way, if you can, go to the Met's amazing exhibit, which runs through August. Here's a link. (19/x) metmuseum.org/exhibitions/va…

But these two paintings? Once in museums, now gone. Dr. Gachet hasn't been seen in 33 years, a quarter of the entire life of the painting. There's a fabulous book about "Portrait of Dr. Gachet" by Cynthia Saltzman. (20x) amazon.com/Portrait-Dr-Ga…

This is my first art story and I'm hooked, thanks to our editor Rebecca Corbett who encouraged us to focus on the story of the van Gogh, one of many stories within the 1000s of documents we obtained about the offshore empire of the jailed Chinese billionaire, Xiao Jianhua (21/x)

So I get that billionaires are free to buy and sell the few van Gogh paintings still in private hands. But it's so sad when they don't have the decency to lend them from time to time to museums, so that the public can enjoy them. They belong to the world. END (21/21)