Framed print of the Dr. Felix Ray portrait by Vincent van Gogh.

In the early morning on Christmas eve of 1888, the seriously wounded man was brought to the hospital of Arles. The bleeding patient was seen by a 23-year-old intern Felix Ray who was on duty that day. This patient, as one might guess, was Vincent Van Gogh, who after a quarrel with Paul Gauguin, from despair, cut off the lower part of his ear with a razor and took it to a brothel. When the artist was taken to the hospital, he suffered not only from serious blood loss, but also from hallucinations. Dr. Ray looked after Vincent during the 15 days he spent in the hospital, and kept visiting the artist at the Yellow House after his discharge. He became one of the few people who treated van Gogh well in his last months of life in Arles.

Shortly after Vincent had left the hospital, he decided to thank his savior and painted a portrait of him. Later Ray told: "When I saw that he outlined my head entirely in green (he had only two main colors, red and green), that he painted my hair and my mustache ... in a blazing red on a biting green background, I was simply horrified ..." The doctor admitted that he never liked the painting. And what's more, the unenviable fate was waiting for it. At first, the canvas was kept in the attic for a long time, and then Rey's mother covered the hole in the chicken coop with it. In 1900, the Portrait of Doctor Rey was discovered by the artist Charles Camoin who came to Arles following in Van Gogh's footsteps.

Source: Arthive