Original version
When was the painting put in the hidden room?
Portrait of Dr. Gachet
Original version. First sold in 1897 by Van Gogh's sister-in-law for 300 francs, the painting was subsequently bought by Paul Cassirer (1904), Kessler (1904), and Druet (1910). In 1911, the painting was acquired by the Städel (Städtische Galerie) in Frankfurt, Germany and hung there until 1933, when the painting was put in a hidden room. The Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda confiscated the work in 1937 as part of its campaign to rid Germany of so-called degenerate art, leading to Hermann Göring hurriedly selling it to a dealer in Amsterdam. The dealer in turn sold it to collector Siegfried Kramarsky, who brought it with him when he fled to New York, where the work was often lent to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Kramarsky's family put the painting up for auction at Christie's New York on May 15, 1990, where it became famous for Ryoei Saito, honorary chairman of Daishowa Paper Manufacturing Co., paying US$82.5 million for it, making it then the world's most expensive painting. Remarkably, two days later Saito would buy Renoir's Bal du moulin de la Galette for a nearly-as-much $78.1 million at Sotheby's. The 75-year old Japanese businessman briefly caused a scandal when he said he would have the Van Gogh painting cremated with him after his death, though his aides later claimed Saito threatening to torch the masterpiece was just an expression of intense affection for it. Though he later said he would consider giving the painting to the Japanese government or a museum, no information has been made public about the exact location and ownership of the portrait since his death in 1996. Reports in 2007 have claimed the painting was sold a decade earlier to the Austrian-born investment fund manager Wolfgang Flöttl. Flöttl, in turn, had reportedly been forced by financial reversals to sell the painting to parties as yet unknown.