Vincent van Gogh's Portrait of Dr. Gachet was sold at auction at Christie's in New York for US$82.5 million, making it the world's most expensive painting at the time.

Vincent Willem van Gogh was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade, he created approximately 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of them in the last two years of his life. His oeuvre includes landscapes, still lifes, portraits, and self-portraits, most of which are characterised by bold colours and dramatic brushwork that contributed to the rise of expressionism in modern art. Van Gogh's work was only beginning to gain critical attention before he died from a self-inflicted gunshot at age 37. During his lifetime, only one of Van Gogh's paintings, The Red Vineyard, was sold.

The Portrait of Doctor Gachet is one of the most revered paintings by the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh. It depicts Dr. Paul Gachet, a homeopathic doctor and artist with whom van Gogh resided following a spell in an asylum at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. Gachet took care of Van Gogh during the final months of his life. There are two authenticated versions of the portrait, both painted in June 1890 at Auvers-sur-Oise. Both show Gachet sitting at a table and leaning his head on his right arm, but they are easily differentiated in color and style. There is also an etching.

Christie's is a British auction house founded in 1766 by James Christie. Its main premises are on King Street, St James's in London, and it has additional salerooms in New York, Paris, Hong Kong, Milan, Geneva, Shanghai, and Dubai. It is owned by Groupe Artémis, the holding company of François Pinault. In 2022 Christie's sold US$8.4 billion in art and luxury goods, an all-time high for any auction house. On 15 November 2017, the Salvator Mundi was sold at Christie's in New York for $450 million to Saudi Prince Badr bin Abdullah Al Saud, the highest price ever paid for a painting.