Van Gogh s death is the birth of a legend

July 27, 1890

Van Gogh "shot himself".

On the evening of July 27, 1890, Vincent van Gogh stumbled back to the town of Orwell.

In the afternoon, he left the Raoul Hotel, where he was temporarily staying, with all his painting tools, and went out to sketch. The people of the inn and the town were accustomed to this, and they had never seen this withdrawn painter sell anything, but he didn't seem to care, and was immersed in his own world all day long.

But Van Gogh looked a little strange when he came back this time: on an apparently hot summer evening, he buttoned up his coat tightly and limped with his hands on his abdomen.

When he entered the Raoul Hotel, Van Gogh didn't say hello to anyone, went straight to the attic, and got into his own room of only 7 square meters.

Out of an abundance of caution, Raoult, the shopkeeper, followed him upstairs and into Van Gogh's room, where he found him curled up in his bed with a very pained expression.

Seeing the shopkeeper walk in, Van Gogh lifted his shirt - next to the ribs, there was a small bullet hole.

I hurt myself. He said.

Both doctors and police rushed to the hotel.

Doctors found that the bullet that had been fired into Van Gogh's body did not penetrate his body, but remained near his spine.

The police were concerned about whether this was a ** case, so he asked Van Gogh: "Do you want to commit suicide?" ”

Van Gogh replied: "I think so. ”

Theo, Van Gogh's closest brother in his life, quickly rushed over from Paris when he got the news. At his bedside, Theo promised his brother that he would save him.

But Van Gogh said to his beloved brother:

Pain is life. ”

It is said that it was Van Gogh's last words in this world.

On July 30, after more than 30 hours of agonizing struggle, Van Gogh passed away.

He was 37 years old.

Van Gogh's self-portrait (1887), photographed at the Art Institute of Chicago.

In fact, this version has a whole story:

Van Gogh borrowed a handful from the innkeeper Raoul, saying that he wanted to drive away the crows in the wheat field, and then came to a wheat field outside the town. In the wheat field, he put down the painting tools he was carrying, raised his gun and shot himself in the abdomen. The shot didn't hit the heart, but it left him unconscious. When he woke up again, it was dusk, and when he couldn't find the pistol, he had to hobbled back to the inn on his own to ask for help.

In the famous book "Longing for Life: Van Gogh" by American biographer Irving Stone, this scene of suicide is literarily sublimated:

He turned his face to the sun. Put the left *** against your side. Pull the bolt. He fell, his face buried in the loose soil of the fertile, spicy wheat fields——— the endless earth——— back into his mother's womb. ”

Coupled with the release of the Hollywood adaptation of the same name in 1956 "Longing for Life", Van Gogh's tragic but shocking life ending deeply touched the hearts of millions of people.

Many people even feel that there is no other ending that is more in line with everyone's imagination.

Because he is none other than Van Gogh, who is genius but withdrawn, and even mentally ill.

The story of Van Gogh is of course already familiar to everyone.

Van Gogh was not a long life, and there are probably a few points that have been talked about by people.

One is that he was poor during his lifetime and enjoyed mourning after his death.

Van Gogh was actually born into a middle-class family, his father was a priest, and his mother was a wealthy girl. However, when he grew up, Van Gogh seemed to live up to his family's expectations of him, and after working as a priest and art dealer, he finally chose to become a professional painter, but he fell into poverty. Van Gogh sold only one painting in his lifetime. In the last years of his life, he relied entirely on his dearest brother, to whom Van Gogh wrote more than 600 letters, a considerable number of which had only one request: "Please send me some more money." ”

The only painting Van Gogh ever sold during his lifetime, The Red Vineyard, sold for 400 francs at the time, which is roughly equivalent to more than $1,000 today.

In June 1890, Van Gogh painted a portrait of his ** doctor, Dr. Gachet. 100 years later, in 1990, the portrait of "Dr. Gachet" was auctioned at Christie's auction house in New York, and within 3 minutes, it was sold by the Japanese for $82.5 million, setting a record for the most expensive artwork ever. This record was not broken until 2004.

Of the ten most expensive paintings in the world at that time, five were Van Gogh.

Van Gogh's talent for painting did not begin in childhood.

Strictly speaking, until Van Gogh's death, he officially devoted himself to art creation for about ten years, and he was a standard "halfway monk" painter.

Van Gogh's work shortly after he learned to paint: "Fisherman by the Sea". The face must have been erased because the painting was broken. Chen Danqing liked this painting very much.

"The Potato Eater".

The various artistic trends in Paris had a great impact on Van Gogh from the countryside, and the one that impressed him the most was "Impressionism".

Remember Van Gogh's use of color in The Potato Eater? When he arrived in Paris, Van Gogh's paintings became like this:

Van Gogh's The Sower

On the left is Miller's The Sower, and on the right is a copy of Van Gogh.

Van Gogh often mentions a work himself, The Bedroom of Arles. This is his own bedroom, and the simple arrangement gives a completely different feeling through the rendering of colors. (Photo taken at the Art Institute of Chicago).

There is another one, naturally, he has a withdrawn personality and abnormal spirit.

Van Gogh, as the eldest son in the family (his brother died young), is actually quite favored and expected. However, Van Gogh's personality was never able to cope with such pressure, which eventually led to personality distortion and even mental disorders (Van Gogh's life story is limited to space and will not be expanded in this article).

The most famous story about his insaneness is undoubtedly that after a quarrel with his close friend Gauguin, he cut off his ear with a knife, packed it up and gave it to a prostitute.

Van Gogh's Self-Portrait After Cutting His Ear. There are several versions of why Van Gogh cut off his ears, some say that he cut off his ears because he thought they were not good-looking when he painted himself, and some say that he cut them off in anger after receiving a letter from his brother Theo to get married. But in any case, seeing this self-portrait painted a month after the ear was cut off, I believe that Van Gogh's own state of mind has calmed down.

In June 1890, Van Gogh had a second nervous breakdown and was in the hospital to recuperate, creating one of his masterpieces: "Starry Night". It was only a month before his death.

And the facts seem to confirm this.

However, people tend to overlook the fact that Van Gogh, as a devout believer and preacher, was always against suicide – he always said that suicide was "morally cowardly" and "the act of dishonest people".

Wait, is there something wrong with that?

Did Van Gogh really die by suicide?

Now, let's go back to the day Van Gogh committed suicide – July 27, 1890.

Regarding the claim that Van Gogh committed suicide, there are actually a series of doubts:

First of all, the doctor determined that the gun was fired from a distance from the body, not from a very close distance - so how did Van Gogh manage to commit suicide?

Secondly, the police then went to the wheat field that Van Gogh had mentioned, and all the painting tools, including the pistol, were not found—if it was a suicide, those things should have been there.

Thirdly, when the police asked Van Gogh if he committed suicide, he kept being vague: "Don't accuse anyone, I myself wanted to kill myself" - as if trying to hide something.

Fourth, at least two eyewitnesses testified that Van Gogh was seen going to the village of Chapenval, which was in two opposite directions to the wheat field where Van Gogh said he had committed suicide.

Fifth, Van Gogh did not leave a suicide note, and in the letter he wrote to his brother shortly before his "suicide", he also described his plans and plans for the future - he did not look like a person who wanted to commit suicide.

So, in the face of these doubts, did Van Gogh really commit suicide?

Van Gogh's painting "Crows in the Rye". It was painted in July 1890, the same month he ended his life. Although the whole picture is composed of two main colors, gold and blue, it gives people an indescribable sense of oppression, so it was once rumored to be the last painting he painted before committing suicide.

This is a point made in the biography of Van Gogh, co-authored by Steven Naifey and Gregory White Smith.

In 1956, the same year that the Hollywood movie "Desire for Life" was released, an 82-year-old Frenchman named René Sakryton came into view.

He said that when he was 16 years old, he lived in the small town of Orwell and knew a strange painter, Van Gogh.

Probably the earliest of Van Gogh's works to be known to the general public: Fifteen Sunflowers in a Vase. The painting sold for $39.5 million in 1987 – it was acquired by a Japanese and is now in the collection of the Togo Sei'ko Museum of Art in Tokyo. Van Gogh was very obsessed with Japanese ukiyo-e throughout his life, and the Japanese also had a strong desire to collect Van Gogh's paintings.

Unlike his brother, Rene is more fond of pranks. He would put salt in Van Gogh's coffee, put snakes in Van Gogh's paint box, and smear red peppers on Van Gogh's brushes – because Van Gogh would often lick his pen with his tongue while painting and contemplating.

Despite this, Van Gogh kept in touch with the brothers. On the one hand, it was Van Gogh who liked to discuss art with his brother Gaston, and on the other hand, the brothers would often pay for Van Gogh's bar bills.

An important detail in Rene's recollection is that he once bought a worn-out 38 caliber pistol from the innkeeper Raoul, and kept it with him.

Regarding what happened on July 27, 1890, René suggested that Van Gogh had stolen the pistol from his bag. This statement contradicts Raoult's account, as the owner said that Van Gogh had borrowed a pistol from him. Moreover, this contradicts Rene's later account: he says that he is inseparable from the canvas bag that contains the gun, but he also says that he later found that his pistol was gone when he arrived in Normandy.

One thing is certain, though, that on the day Van Gogh fired, the brothers Gaston and Rene left the town and flew away.

For this reason, an inferred hypothesis is made in Van Gogh's biography:

On the afternoon of July 27, Van Gogh, who was out sketching, was on his way to the village of Chapenval (the road happened to pass by the bar where he and the René brothers frequented), and ran into René and his friends. For some reason, there was an argument between the two sides - it could have been another prank, but this time it seemed that the joke was too big, and Rene's hand ** hit Van Gogh.

The panicked Van Gogh covered his wound and limped back to the hotel, while the brothers, who were also terrified, put away Van Gogh's painting tools, including the pistol, and flew away.

If this assumption is true, the five "doubts" mentioned above can be perfectly explained.

Except for one more thing that seems unreasonable:

Why did Van Gogh later insist that he had committed suicide to the police?

Van Gogh's "Iris", painted in 1889, a year before his death. In 1988, the painting was auctioned for $53 million.

On the one hand, it is not so much that Van Gogh made a certain agreement with the brothers at that time, but rather that Van Gogh was motivated by his own kind character - he wanted to protect the brothers from trouble. This is also the reason why he stressed to the police at the time that "do not charge anyone".

On the other hand, and perhaps more important, is Van Gogh's own desire to die.

This does not contradict Van Gogh's attitude against suicide. Van Gogh once wrote a sentence himself:

I don't seek death, but I don't run away from it when it comes. ”

For the 37-year-old Van Gogh, mental torture, physical pain, career difficulties, and the marriage of his beloved brother, under the multiple blows, if there is suddenly a chance to get relief without committing suicide, can Van Gogh really resist?

Of course, everything is just an inference. But just like Van Gogh's suicide statement - everything is only his own statement, without any human evidence or physical evidence.

Unless there is a time machine, it is difficult to find out exactly how Van Gogh suffered that shot.

But one thing is clearer:

For the public, suicide is undoubtedly more dazzling for the halo that Van Gogh left to posterity.

I once gave an example at a readers' meeting to the effect that:

Sometimes, what do some think a great genius scientist should look like?

First of all, he should be poor, if he sits on a luxury yacht and holds a patent worth hundreds of millions of yuan, he will definitely lose a lot of taste; Secondly, it is better for him to have some quirks, such as eating only singular rice grains when eating, and the room number of the hotel must be divisible by 3; If he could be cynical, live in isolation, and finally die alone, only for posterity to discover a great invention from his manuscripts for the benefit of all mankind, it would be perfect.

In fact, our mass media also understands the psychology and needs of the public, and when reporting and shaping typical characters, they also try to move in these directions as much as possible, even if they add a little imagination or exaggeration.

Not only scientists, but also artists.

Van Gogh is a near-perfect example of this: talented, destitute, withdrawn and depressed, and died by suicide.

Over the years, Van Gogh has become an image of dedication to art, dreams, and truth, and in this image, "suicide" is actually a very important factor - even if the story may not end as we imagined.

In my personal opinion, the possible alternative version may be more tortuous than suicide, and more revealing of Van Gogh's character – of course, this can only remain at the level of inference.

In fact, whether it is poverty or hardship, Van Gogh is not the artist most worthy of writing about in history, but he still insists on his dream despite being ignored and coldly treated, which is the most moving.

That's right, we all actually know that in terms of Van Gogh's life and his talent, there is no need to add another "suicide" to add weight to his life story.

In the tenth episode of the fifth season of the British drama "Doctor Who", Van Gogh was taken to Paris in 2010, the Musée d'Orsay. He was taken to an exhibition hall and was surprised to find that all of his work was on display.

Then, from the mouth of the curator, he heard what later generations said about him:

I think Van Gogh is the most outstanding painter of all time, there is no one. Definitely the most recognizable, greatest, and most admired painter of any period. His mastery of color is unparalleled, and he transforms the painful ordeal of life into passionate beauty on canvas. Pain is easy to express, but how to blend passion and pain to express the passion, joy and magnificence of the world, he has never been before, and perhaps no one will come after. ”

At that moment, Van Gogh, who had never been affirmed in his life, cried like a child.

At that moment, sitting in front of the screen, I also burst into tears.