SHOULD you stumble across an innocuous portrait of a Belgian doctor in the attic or at a car boot sale you may be in for a multimillion-pound surprise.
The large picture on the right is a mock-up of a lost Van Gogh oil painting of Amadeus Cavenaile based on a photograph of the doctor, who treated the artist for syphilis in 1885.
If the real painting is found, the owner could be sitting on a fortune. Van Gogh’s Portrait of Dr Gachet, an authenticated work depicting another of his doctors, was sold in 1990 for $82.5 million (£45 million), the second-highest price paid for art at auction.
According to Cavenaile’s descendants, Van Gogh painted a portrait of his doctor in lieu of payment for a prescription. Family members recall the painting hanging on Cavenaile’s wall in Antwerp, but the work has since been lost and is suspected either to be in London, or buried in a back garden in Belgium.
Although Van Gogh never mentioned the painting in his letters to his brother Theo, experts at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam say that there is no reason to distrust the family’s claim.
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The search for the painting began at the Van Gogh Museum, which holds a sketchbook belonging to the artist with Cavenaile’s name scrawled on the back. Ken Wilkie, a journalist and Van Gogh enthusiast, set about tracing the Cavenaile family.
Cavenaile’s grandson, also named Amadeus, had carried on the family business and was also a practising doctor in Antwerp. He confirmed to Mr Wilkie that his grandfather had treated Van Gogh. “My grandfather did tell me that before he treated Van Gogh, the painter warned him that he was unable to pay cash,” he said. “The only way of paying was by painting his portrait. My grandfather agreed.”
He said the painting had been lost, but recalled seeing it when he was a little boy. “It was a small oil painting, signed ‘Vincent’. Years later, when I saw the portrait that Van Gogh made of one of his French doctors, Gachet, I was reminded of the portrait of my grandfather.”
When Van Gogh’s doctor died, the painting was passed to his daughter Jeanne and her husband Adolph Kleibs, an ethnic Russian. The pair fled Belgium at the beginning of the First World War and settled in London.
The younger Dr Cavenaile, who died in the early 1990s, believed that the Kleibs had taken the portrait with them to North London. He told Mr Wilkie: “Someone in the family may have the Van Gogh portrait of my grandfather on the wall without realising what it is.”
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However, the Kleibs’ daughter-in-law, who still lives in North London, believes that the family left the painting behind when they fled. Doreen Clives, whose husband Serge anglicised his name when they married, said she was certain that it was left in Antwerp.
“They had to flee in a hurry,” she said. “They had hardly any belongings with them. They often marvelled at how lucky they had been to escape with their lives. You don’t think of taking valuables with you when you are running for your life.”
Another branch of the Kleibs family lives in Kent. Jane, Jeanne’s granddaughter, agreed that the painting had been left behind. “The family had to leave almost everything,” she said. “But they buried the painting in the garden with a few other valuables too clumsy to carry. Mother told me several times that they buried (the portrait) in the garden just before they left.”
The house in Antwerp is now a carpet shop. If the portrait is still buried, it is underneath the concrete floor of the shop’s extension. Alternatively, the painting might have been unearthed and hung, unrecognised, on someone’s wall. The Van Gogh Museum said it would be interested to hear from anyone who had such a painting.
Although Van Gogh never mentioned the portrait in his letters to his brother Theo, he did mention the doctor several times.
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Louis van Tilborgh, curator of paintings at the museum, said: “We have to be very careful with what really happened, but there is no reason to think that the family cannot be trusted.”
He added that Van Gogh would have been likely to mention the portrait, but the archive is not complete. He said: “The only reason to think there is no such painting is that he never mentions it. But whether this is important, I don’t know.” If you have a picture of a bearded man that bears a resemblance to this artist’s impression, you might want to seek expert advice.