ART

Portrait of Van Gogh’s Doctor to Be Auctioned: Vincent van Gogh’s portrait of Dr. Paul-Ferdinand Gachet, who treated the troubled artist during the last year of his life, will be sold at Christie’s New York on May 15. The painting is expected to bring between $40 million and $50 million. That estimate places the expressionistic portrait between two other high-priced Van Goghs--”Irises,” which sold for $53.9 million on Nov. 11, 1987, setting a world record for an artwork, and “Sunflowers,” which brought $39.9 million on March 31, 1987. The portrait of Dr. Gachet belongs to a trust established by Siegfried Kramarsky, a New York banker and philanthropist who died in 1961. The painting has been on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York since 1984 and has been in major exhibitions there. Van Gogh painted two versions of the doctor’s portrait. The other one hangs in the Musee d’Orsay in Paris.