The Death of Vincent Van Gogh

Self-portrait, 1887 - Vincent Van Gogh

Portrait of Dr. Gachet, 1890- Vincent Van Gogh

Wheatfield with Crows, 1890- Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh's last ever painting .

Please note: This article discusses suicide and may trigger a negative response in some readers.

I always find reading about artists fascinating, not only because of the interesting lives they have often led, but also because of the way in which each writer portrays them. What I mean by this is, what each author of each piece chooses to include and not to include in their article about the artist.

I recently went to The Lume to see Vincent Van Gogh and as part of that, I was given the program ‘Van Gogh’ which I later read. I noticed a familiar pattern in the context of the writing, it was of course the basic story of his life. It made me wonder if there were many pieces written on his death. While his life was fascinating, death, at least to me, has always been interesting and in Vincent’s case, he scripted his own… or did he? The Lume program chose to write just two small paragraphs about Vincent’s death, saying he shot himself in the town fields, halfway through writing a letter to his brother (Van Gogh, published by Grand Experiences, 2021).

There are however, three main versions of the events that surrounded that fateful day in 1890. The first version is told by Adeline Ravoux, who was 13 at the time of the incident, but who did not put her story in writing until she was 76. Her version is that Vincent left the inn, where Adeline was working at the time, just after breakfast and later returned at around 9pm, holding his stomach where he had shot himself. In her version Vincent told gendarmes (before you Google gendarmes like I had to, it just means: a heavy cavalryman of noble birth) “My body is mine and I am free to do what I want with it. Do not accuse anybody, it is I that wished to commit suicide” (Cited from Adeline Ravoux, “Letter to n/a, written 1956 in Auversur-Oise” translated 2011). If this is what he said, I find it interesting. It’s a very ‘my body, my rules’ kind of statement, which makes him sound lucid and in control of his own destiny.

The second version is told by Ѐmile Bernard who says that Vincent left the inn in the evening, sometime after dusk. He went to the back of the château, pulled out his revolver and shot himself. Ѐmile’s version continues with him saying that Vincent told Dr Gachet, who was trying to save his life, that he had deliberately shot himself and that if the doctor saved him he will “have to do it all over again” (cited Emile Bernard, “Letter to Albert  Auirer, Written 2 August, 1890, Paris” translated in 2011).

In both these versions, Vincent shot himself in the stomach and in both versions he claimed suicide. What is really interesting though, is that there is a third version, one which was first written about in 2011 by authors Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith who published a biography on Vincent called Van Gogh: The Life. In the book they examine the theory that he may have accidently been shot by some boys Vincent knew. They go on to ask questions such as, where would the mentally unwell Vincent be able to get a gun from? How is it that his painting equipment was never found by police in the fields where it ought to have been? Why would he shoot himself in the stomach and at such a strange angle? Why did the prolific writer of letters, never leave a suicide note? And finally, why would he shoot himself while he appeared to be in such a happy place at the time?

This third version of events was met with both belief and disbelief by different Van Gogh experts. In fact, according to Naifeh and Smith, they weren’t even the first people to question his suicide, it was in fact another museum researcher who first took his theory that it had not been suicide, to a senior official in 2006, but was told that it was “too controversial” to pursue that line of inquiry (cited  Naife and Smith “ NCIS: Provence: The Van Gogh Mystery”, Vanity Fair 2014).

In 2014, in an effort to uncover the truth behind Vincent’s death, Naifeh hired Vincent Di Maio. Di Maio is a board certified anatomic, clinical and forensic pathologist who has won awards for his work. Di Maio found that, in his opinion, and “in all medical probability, the wound incurred by Van Gogh was not self-inflicted (cited  Naife and Smith “ NCIS: Provence: The Van Gogh Mystery”, Vanity Fair 2014). This opinion was formed based on multiple pieces of evidence including that:

1.       Black soot from the gun should have been found on Vincent’s stomach

2.       If black soot was not present, the gun needed to be held nearly 2 feet away

3.       The angle to the bullet meant that Vincent would have had to hold the gun in a very “awkward angle”

4.       Vincent should have had black soot and burns on his fingers from shooting the gun

None of the above was found, noted in any autopsy or account of Vincent’s death or final days alive (cited  Naife and Smith “ NCIS: Provence: The Van Gogh Mystery”, Vanity Fair 2014).

So which version you choose to believe is up to you. Verbal accounts say it was suicide, medical research says this was highly unlikely. Either way, the Van Gogh museum is backing the original story… but if you have read my blog on Hilm Af Klint, then you probably already know that as much as I love art museums, I definitely don’t always trust them to do the right thing, nor do I trust them to necessarily tell the truth, particularly when that truth requires rewriting history.