Paul-Ferdinand Gachet was a French physician most famous for treating the painterVincent van Gogh during his last weeks in Auvers-sur-Oise. Gachet was a great supporter of artists and the Impressionist movement. He was an amateur painter, signing his works "Paul van Ryssel", referring to his birthplace: Rijssel is the Dutch name of Lille.
Biography
He was born and raised in Lille. His family moved to Mechelen, where Gachet's father was transferred to in 1844/1845 to start a new branch of the firm he was working for. While a student at the University of Paris, he learnt drawing in his spare time, and collected paintings by Gustave Courbet and Édouard Manet.. After gaining his BA degree, he worked at the mental hospitals of Bicêtre and Salpêtrière. His teachers included Armand Trousseau. In 1858 he received a medical degree for his thesis Étude sur la Mélancolie. He returned to Paris and set up a private homeopathic practice. Gachet married Blanche Castets in 1868. Their daughter, Margueritte Clémentine Elisa was born in 1869. In 1872 he moved to Auvers-sur-Oise, a town around from the centre of the city that was popular with artists. There he continued his medical practice, but also associated with artists such as Camille Pissarro and Paul Cézanne, Cézanne helping him establish his own studio in his attic. Gachet also knew Gustave Courbet, Champfleury and Victor Hugo. He was a friend of the chemist Henri Nestlé and prescribed Nestlé's new powdered milk supplement to some of his child patients. Under the pen-name Blanche de Mézin, he published books in medicine and art-criticism. He spent much time with Charles Méryon after the etcher's committal to Charenton. He oversaw Auguste Renoir's recovery from pneumonia in 1882. He advised Édouard Manet against the amputation of his leg. However, Manet did not follow this advice. Gachet's tomb is situated in section 52 of Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.
Vincent's brother, Theo van Gogh, thought that Gachet's background and sensitivity toward artists would make him an ideal doctor for Vincent during his recovery. Very soon after he began seeing Gachet, however, Vincent began to doubt the doctor's usefulness. Vincent described Gachet as: "sicker than I am, I think, or shall we say just as much". Gachet has come in for much criticism over the years regarding Van Gogh's suicide after ten weeks of consultation. However, Van Gogh was either unable or unwilling to follow his doctors' advice to cut back on alcohol and smoking. According to Arnold, "there was not much else available to any physician of the day which could have reversed the course of Vincent's illness," and he summarizes the medical treatment that Van Gogh received from his various doctors thus: "The overall assessment is rather that they did as well as expected with an unfamiliar disease and a difficult patient."
Subject in art
Gachet was friends with and treated Pissarro, Renoir, Manet, Cézanne and Goeneutte, to name just a few. He had amassed one of the largest impressionist art collections in Europe before he died in 1909. Gachet, his wife and his home were the subjects of several pieces of art by celebrated artists including:
Portrayals
plays Gachet in Julian Schnabel's At Eternity's Gate, which depicts van Gogh painting Gachet's portrait in one scene. Jerome Flynn plays Gachet in the 2017 filmLoving Vincent, in a scene where he discusses his own role in Vincent's final days.
"Dr. Gachet", a song written and sung by Rod MacDonald in 1997, tells the painting's history and notes "the painting Van Gogh couldn't sell / has become too valuable / for anyone to ever see again."
