Large Fierce Mammal

Vincent Van Gogh was born 30 March 1853 and died 29 July 1890 in a French inn, two days after receiving a gun shot wound to the abdomen that he confessed on his death bed was self-inflicted. His intention has long been held to have been suicide, however in October of 2011, a 960 page biography was published by Pulitzer Prize winning authors Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith titled, Van Gogh: The Life, that made a very different, and highly controversial, alternative claim, “… that he had been shot, possibly accidentally, by a 16-year-old schoolboy.”

“The biography was compiled after 10 years of study by its authors and aired a startling theory. Mr Naifeh said: ‘The accepted understanding of what happened in Auvers among the people who knew him was that he was killed accidentally by a couple of boys and he decided to protect them by accepting the blame.’ American academic John Rewald had talked of hearing local rumours about such a theory in the 1930s.

“The biographers pointed to Gaston and Rene Secretan, students at a Paris lycee, as responsible. Renee was interviewed in 1957 about the artist and revealed that he owned a pistol that Van Gogh may have taken. The authors of the recent article said the interview, which the biography relied on heavily, did not substantiate the claims ‘in the slightest’.” ~ Did Vincent van Gogh commit suicide or was Dutch painter killed by an acquaintance?

Two researchers sent by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam to investigate the claims concluded, “Truly nothing substantiates their argument for the train of events they construe, apart from a twentieth-century rumour arising from an authentic story of a trigger-happy brat in 1890, who merely claimed that Van Gogh probably stole the gun from him ….”

While this was certainly the last controversial violent interlude in Van Gogh’s life, in the public mind it is another that arises on hearing his name — the matter of his ear.

“The ear incident”, as it is referred to by the Van Gogh Museum, occurred in the period from 1888 to 1889 while Van Gogh was painting from his “Studio of the South” in Arles, a place where he envisioned a group of artists would live and work, creating paintings his brother Theo would sell in Paris.

According to the Van Gogh Museum,

“With this ‘artists’ colony’ in mind, Vincent rented four rooms in the ‘Yellow House’ on Place Lamartine. Paul Gauguin was the first – and, as it would turn out, the last – artist to move in with him. Gauguin arrived in late October 1888, but only after considerable cajoling. Theo had to stump up his travel expenses, for instance, but he was glad to do so for Vincent’s sake:

“‘So Gauguin’s coming; that will make a big change in your life. I hope that your efforts will succeed in making your house a place where artists will feel at home.'” ~ Theo to Vincent, Paris, 19 October 1888

The Museum further states,

“Van Gogh and Gauguin worked hard together and their collaboration resulted in some exceptional paintings. At the same time, however, the two men had very different views on art, which led to frequent, heated discussions:

“‘Gauguin and I talk a lot about Delacroix, Rembrandt &c. The discussion is excessively electric. We sometimes emerge from it with tired minds, like an electric battery after it’s run down.'” ~ Vincent to Theo, Arles, 17 or 18 December 1888

“Gauguin worked mainly from memory and his imagination, while Vincent preferred to paint what he could see in front of him. Their very different characters caused the tension between them to rise steadily. Vincent began to display signs of agitation and when Gauguin threatened to leave, the pressure became too much. Van Gogh became so distraught that he threatened his friend with a razor. Later that evening, he sliced off his own ear at the Yellow House, wrapped it in newspaper and presented it to a prostitute in the nearby red-light district.”

As with the gun shot that ended his life, the ear incident has been revisited in recent years with equally cacophonous results. In the 2009 release of the English language edition of their earlier Van Goghs Ohr: Paul Gauguin und der Pakt des Schweigens (Van Gogh’s Ear: Paul Gauguin and the Pact of Silence) historians Hans Kaufmann and Rita Wildegans take things quite a bit further than the official record.

Of the relationship between Van Gogh and Gauguin, Kurt Shaw writes:

“But living, eating and working together in a room only 15 feet wide and 24 feet long proved to be taxing. Except for occasional outings with visiting friends and nightly visits to the local brothels, which the pair termed “hygienic excursions,” the two artists were rarely apart.

“Imagine this ‘Odd Couple’ pairing. Van Gogh, then 35, was ‘Oscar’. Just as unkempt as Neil Simon’s Broadway and TV character, he would talk incessantly while working frenetically, oftentimes fueled by too much alcohol.

“The 40-year-old Gauguin, on the other hand, liked everything orderly and neat. He was the ‘Felix’ of the scenario. A former stockbroker and onetime sailor in France’s Merchant Marine, he favored solitude, but was a good cook who did not mind preparing meals for others. That was another plus for van Gogh, who sometimes would rather drink than eat.

“The only commonalities between the two were bouts of depression and suicidal tendencies.

“Gauguin’s account is telling: ‘Between two such beings as he and I, the one a perfect volcano, the other boiling inwardly, some sort of struggle was preparing.’

“It all came to a head on Dec. 23.

“Upset over Gauguin’s plans to return to Paris for Christmas, two days prior van Gogh had hurled a glassful of absinthe at Gauguin at a local bar in a fit of rage. “Dear Gauguin,” wrote a sober Vincent the following day, “I have a vague memory that I offended you last evening.”

“Gauguin, who by then was staying in a hotel, readily forgave him. But when Gauguin set about leaving the next day, Dec. 23, with suitcases in hand, van Gogh ran after him in the street hurling wild accusations. Gauguin turned to confront him, whereupon van Gogh retreated to the house they shared.

“There, as legend goes, he used the razor to cut off part of his left ear, which he carefully wrapped in newspaper and presented to a young woman at the local brothel who promptly, and fittingly, fainted.”

…

“Kaufmann and Wildegans spent 10 years reviewing the police report, witness accounts and the artists’ letters. They claim that it was Gauguin, a skilled fencer, who most likely sliced off the ear with a sword in an act of defense during their final fracas, and the two artists agreed to keep a ‘pact of silence’ — Gauguin to avoid prosecution and van Gogh in a vain attempt to maintain the friendship, even though van Gogh was institutionalized for most of the rest of his short life and never saw Gauguin again. ~ ‘Pact of Silence’ examines incident of van Gogh’s ear

In a 2009 interview with ABC News, Hans Kaufmann elaborated,

“We carefully re-examined witness accounts and letters written by both artists and we came to the conclusion that van Gogh was terribly upset over Gauguin’s plan to go back to Paris, after the two men had spent an unhappy stay together at the ‘Yellow House’ in Arles, Southern France, which had been set up as a studio in the south.

“On the evening of December 23, 1888 van Gogh, seized by an attack of a metabolic disease, became very aggressive when Gauguin said he was leaving him for good. The men had a heated argument near the brothel and Vincent might have attacked his friend. Gauguin, wanting to defend himself and wanting to get rid of ‘the madman’ drew his weapon and made a move towards van Gogh and by that he cut off his left ear.”

“We do not know for sure if the blow was an accident or a deliberate attempt to injure van Gogh, but it was dark and we suspect that Gauguin did not intend to hit his friend.”

And then there is Martin Bailey’s 2016 book Studio of the South: Van Gogh in Provence, that posits Van Gogh ‘cut off his ear after learning brother was to marry’ .

“According to a new study of his time in Provence, the gruesome procedure was in fact inspired by the news his brother Theo, his most loyal confidant and financial supporter, was about to marry after a whirlwind romance. The research throws doubt on the popular theory that Van Gogh took a razor to his ear after a passionate row with fellow artist Paul Gauguin.”

The article continues,

The razor slash left Van Gogh bleeding copiously, but he wrapped the piece of ear in paper and walked to his favourite brothel, where he gave it to a young woman he knew. Another recent book, by Bernadette Murphy, suggested that this was not a prostitute, but a local farmer’s daughter working there as a servant. Murphy also uncovered a drawing, made by a doctor long after the event, suggesting that Van Gogh had cut the entire ear off, and not just the lobe. In any event, the poor woman opened the parcel, fainted on the spot, Van Gogh fled, and the police were called.

A 2016 article titled, Van Gogh cut off his whole ear instead of just the lobe and gave it to a brothel maid, new research finds , deals with the Murphy findings in more detail:

“A letter from Van Gogh’s doctor, Felix Rey, reveals that the painter did not remove just a section of his ear, after all, but severed it entirely.

“The woman he delivered it to was not a prostitute – as previously thought – but a humble maid who had been injured by a dog bite and worked to pay off her medical bills.

“Bernadette Murphy, the researcher who discovered the letter and traced the family of the unknown girl, has now speculated that Van Gogh could have been offering his own flesh in a noble but deluded attempt to help heal her ….

“Ms Murphy, 58, spent seven years cross-referencing records from the period to find the girl, identifying her as a young woman named Gabrielle who had been savaged by a rabid dog a year before.

“In order to pay off medical bills, Ms Murphy found, she took a job as a cleaner at the brothel, and is likely to have been well known to Van Gogh in the small community.

“She had had a very nasty scar on her arm following the bite,” Ms Murphy told The Daily Telegraph.

“Van Gogh was somebody who was very touched by people in difficulty. I feel that he wanted to give her this gift of flesh.”

Sketch by Dr. Felix Rey of Vincent Van Gogh’s ear at the time he treated him following the amputation. (Click to enlarge)

And so the debate over Vincent Van Gogh’s ear and that which befell it will continue for some time it seems. Whether it was taken by self-wielded razor or Paul Gauguin’s blade, his life by his own hand or that of a “trigger-happy brat”, history seems willing to grant him at least one consistency — it seems not to find it a stretch to believe he was always ready to take ownership of bad outcomes.