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Meet Vincent

The End of a Difficult Road

Vincent van Gogh took his own life in July 1890. He felt he couldn’t go on. The immense demands he made of himself, his obsessive labour, his mental illness and, not least, his changing relationship with his brother had all become too much. Vincent felt he had failed as both an artist and a human being.

How did it go so wrong?

If I was without your friendship I would be sent back without remorse to suicide, and however cowardly I am, I would end up going there.


To Theo from Arles, 30 April 1889

The beginning of the end

Vincent left the clinic at Saint-Rémy in May 1890, hoping he would be able to live independently with his illness. He found a certain peace in the village of Auvers-sur-Oise near Paris, where he soon began to paint prolifically once more.

Sadly, it was not to last. Two months after arriving, Vincent shot himself in the chest. He died of his wounds on 29 July 1890.

Ah well, I risk my life for my own work and my reason has half foundered in it. (…) But what can you do...


The final sentence of the unfinished letter to Theo, stained with blood and with a note in Theo’s hand: ‘The letter he had on him on 27 July, that horrible day.’

Vincent had been lodging in Auvers at the inn run by the Ravoux family, who had grown accustomed to him setting off each day to work in the surrounding countryside. On 27 July, he failed to return for his evening meal.

Knowing Vincent’s punctuality when it came to dinner, Mr and Mrs Ravoux and their daughter immediately began to worry.

Vincent staggered into the inn, badly wounded, around nine o’clock. When Ravoux asked what he had done, he replied: ‘I tried to kill myself’.

Early next morning Theo was informed. He rushed from Paris to Vincent’s bedside, where he remained until his brother died the following night.

Auberge Ravoux

Auberge Ravoux on Place de la Mairie in Auvers

Auberge Ravoux

Vincent rented a modest attic room at the Auberge Ravoux for three and a half francs a night. He used the ‘Painter’s Room’ downstairs to paint and to store his canvases.

Two months later, his body would be laid out in the same room. The suicide weapon was almost certainly a pistol taken from the landlord, Arthur Ravoux.

Vincent’s attic room is open to the public nowadays as a monument

Final days

‘When I was sitting with him and told him we would try to cure him and that we kept hoping he would be spared this sort of despair, he said: “Sadness will last forever.” I understood what he meant. Shortly afterwards, he gasped for breath and a moment later closed his eyes.’

Theo van Gogh to his sister Lies, 5 August 1890

Posthumous portrait

Paul van Ryssel (pseudonym of Dr Gachet), Vincent van Gogh on his Deathbed, 1890

Posthumous portrait

Vincent’s body lay on his deathbed for more than a day until a coffin could be brought. Dr Paul Gachet drew this portrait of him there.

The artist’s face has been shaved, and his mutilated ear is visible. A faint geometric pattern can be made out in the drawing, as the paper was laid on a wicker chair while the charcoal was fixed.

Vincent van Gogh, Portrait of Dr Gachet, 1890

Dr Gachet

The day he arrived in Auvers, Vincent went straight to Dr Gachet with Theo’s letter of introduction in his pocket.

The alternative physician and amateur artist (who signed his works ‘Paul van Ryssel’), did not offer him medical treatment, but talked to the artist at length and encouraged him to paint. Gachet taught Vincent how to make etchings in his studio, which is where this portrait was also made.

Rumour

Vincent van Gogh, Landscape at Twilight, 1890

Rumour

Although Vincent himself told the Ravoux family that he had tried to commit suicide, a story circulated in Auvers in the 1950s that he had actually been shot by schoolboys. This can be dismissed, however, as a rumour.

Vincent had been thinking about suicide for some time, and did not take the decision lightly. Before setting off, moreover, he stuffed what amounted to a farewell letter to Theo in his jacket pocket. He shot himself in the fields behind the chateau at Auvers, seen in the background of the painting Landscape at Twilight.

Scene of the shooting

Louis van Ryssel (pseudonym of Paul Gachet Jr), Auvers, the location where Vincent committed suicide, 1904, Musée Tavet-Delacour, Pontoise/Musée Camille Pissarro

Scene of the shooting

Fourteen years after Vincent’s death, Dr Gachet’s son painted this view of the location in Auvers where the painter shot himself.

What was almost certainly the suicide weapon was found almost seventy years later by a farmer while ploughing the fields behind the haystacks in the painting.

The weapon that was found in the fields

The weapon

The calibre of the rusty pistol corresponds with the gunshot wound. The bullet itself remained in Vincent’s body. There were powder burns around the edge of the wound, suggesting that the painter was shot from very close range.

Drained

Two years earlier, life as an artist in Paris had left Vincent utterly drained. His prospects were gloomy and he was already experiencing thoughts of death, even though he was morally opposed to suicide.

You’ll say that this is something like, say, the face of — death


Referring to his Parisian Self-Portrait as a Painter in a letter from Arles to his sister Wil, 16–20 June 1888

In 1888, Vincent moved south to Arles, hoping to make a fresh start. He yearned for jollity, sunshine and colour, and to found an artists’ community, his ‘Studio of the South’. His work might then have some value – something he desired more than ever.

Tension

Vincent van Gogh, Gauguin's Chair, 1888

Tension

When the atmosphere began to cool, the two painters found themselves trapped together in the small studio. Gauguin did not share Vincent’s expectations about a ‘Studio of the South’. They disagreed more and more often, and the atmosphere became increasingly tense.

Things grew even worse when Gauguin began to talk of creating a ‘Studio of the Tropics’ and of leaving in order to find a distant, exotic location for it.

A flicker of hope

Vincent van Gogh, The Yellow House (The Street), 1888

A flicker of hope

The Yellow House in Arles offered a suitable location for Vincent’s artistic collective. With Theo’s help, he tried to enlist the Frenchman Paul Gauguin and, with a surge of optimism, he set about decorating the spare room.

After prolonged cajoling, Gauguin arrived in the autumn of 1888. The two painters threw themselves into their work, driven by healthy artistic rivalry.

Vincent’s Studio of the South never got off the ground. Gauguin left when his companion began to display the first signs of mental illness. Vincent suffered bouts of intense confusion, hallucinations and self-harm.

His doctor diagnosed a combination of epilepsy and mental illness. The precise nature of his affliction is not known.

Attack

Emile Schuffenecker, copy after Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear, 1892-1900

Attack

The tension caused by Gauguin’s threatened departure boiled over on 23 December 1888.

During a heated argument, Vincent became agitated and cut off his ear, which he then presented to a prostitute friend of his. The episode resulted in his hospitalisation in Arles.

Vincent van Gogh, Garden of the Hospital, 1889

Fragile existence

Vincent was discharged from the hospital in January 1889, but he remained mentally fragile. He suffered a relapse in February, when he became convinced he had been poisoned. He was readmitted for ten days, before being allowed to return to the Yellow House.

However, the objections of local residents and fear of fresh relapses led him to commit himself voluntarily to the psychiatric clinic in Saint-Rémy.

Low point

Vincent first saw the vestibule of the asylum in Saint-Rémy in early May 1889. He had reached a low point in his life: being an artist meant he was already socially isolated, and on top of that, he was now labelled a ‘madman’.

Some of his attacks lasted a week, some as long as two months. Vincent put on a brave face during his lucid phases, but in reality he was suffering panic attacks, nightmares and suicidal thoughts.

I think I’ve done well to come here, first, in seeing the reality of the life of the diverse mad or cracked people in this menagerie, I’m losing the vague dread, the fear of the thing.


To Theo and Jo, 9 May 1889

An image of death

Vincent van Gogh, Wheatfield with a Reaper, 1889

An image of death

Vincent described his paintings as ‘a cry of anguish’ – something we feel very strongly in Wheatfield with a Reaper. He painted ‘the image of death, in this sense that humanity would be the wheat being reaped’. But this is a death that is ‘almost smiling. It’s all yellow except for a line of violet hills – a pale, blond yellow. I myself find that funny, that I saw it like that through the iron bars of a cell.’

To Theo, 5 and 6 September 1889

Lost confidence

Vincent van Gogh, Evening (after Millet), 1889

Lost confidence

Between bouts of illness, Vincent painted and drew in the garden of the clinic. But his personal and artistic self-esteem had been undermined.

He sought consolation in the work of other artists, including his guiding light, Millet. He asked Theo to send him prints of Millet’s work, which is how he came to paint the atmospheric Evening.

Suicide remedy

Vincent van Gogh, Garden of the Asylum, 1889

Suicide remedy

Vincent occasionally mentioned his suicidal thoughts, and not without a touch of humour:

‘Every day I take the remedy that the incomparable Dickens prescribes against suicide. It consists of a glass of wine, a piece of bread and cheese and a pipe of tobacco,’ he wrote to his sister Wil in a letter of 28 April - 2 May 1889.

Vincent van Gogh, Window in the Studio, 1889

And he continued: ‘You don’t think that my melancholy comes close to that place, however at moments – ah but... Anyway, it isn’t always pleasant, but I try not to forget completely how to jest.’

Storm clouds above Auvers

After a year, Vincent could no longer stand being in the asylum. He regained his equilibrium somewhat in Auvers, but storm clouds were gathering there too.

Vincent felt profoundly threatened by Theo’s plan to open an art dealership of his own. On top of the painter’s general sense of failure, it meant his future was now uncertain; his brother would be less able to look out for him. In the end, he could see only one way out.

I feel – a failure – that’s it as regards me – I feel that that’s the fate I’m accepting. And which won’t change any more.


To Theo and Jo from Auvers, 24 May 1890

The whole place was in mourning, as if one of our own had died. The door to the bar remained open, but the shutters on the front were closed.


In a 1953 interview, the 76-year-old Adeline Ravoux describes her memories of Vincent’s death

Outside the inn

Auberge Ravoux with Adeline Ravoux and Raoul Levert in the doorway, 1890

Inside the bar at Auberge Ravoux

Men at the bar at Auberge Ravoux, 1890

The day after he died, Vincent’s body lay in the attic room in the searing summer heat, while Levert, the local joiner, hurriedly constructed a coffin. When it was delivered on 30 July, the artist was laid out in the Painter’s Room, which Theo and friends decorated with a selection of Vincent’s own works.

Chapel

Vincent van Gogh, Boy with Orange (Raoul Levert), 1890, private collection

Chapel

Theo and several friends turned the Painter’s Room into a chapel of mourning. In addition to canvases with a symbolic content, such as Wheatfield with a Reaper and Pietà (after Delacroix), they chose paintings of Auvers and its residents, including this portrait of Raoul, the young son of the joiner Levert.

The coffin was surrounded by a profusion of flowers in Vincent’s favourite yellow colour, including a large bunch of sunflowers from Dr Gachet.

Memories

Vincent van Gogh, Portrait of Adeline Ravoux, 1890, private collection

Memories

This portrait of Adeline, Arthur Ravoux’s eldest daughter, also hung in the room where the artist’s body was laid out. Vincent gave it to his landlord before his death, along with his painting of the town hall in Auvers.

Years later, Adeline still clearly remembered the funeral, many details of which we only know thanks to her.

The funeral card

The funeral card

Vincent was buried on 30 July. To make things as easy as possible for his artist friends, Theo included the train times from Paris on the funeral card.

Vincent’s paint supplier, Père Tanguy, came to the service, as did a number of artists, including Emile Bernard, Charles Laval, Auguste Lauzet and Camille Pissarro’s son.

The words ‘en l’Église d’Auvers sur Oise’ have been crossed out, as the priest considered it inappropriate to conduct the funeral of a suicide inside the church.

The funeral cortège made its way from Auberge Ravoux to the churchyard on Wednesday 30 July, led by a grief-stricken Theo. He was followed by friends of the brothers from Paris, the Ravoux family, and neighbours and other villagers who had known the painter in Auvers.

Vincent’s first grave was located close to the entrance of Auvers’ cemetery. His remains were reinterred in 1905. Theo’s remains (d. 1891) were placed beside Vincent’s in 1914.

Shocked reactions

Toulouse-Lautrec's condolence letter

Shocked reactions

In the months following Vincent’s death, both Theo and his mother received numerous letters from artists, expressing their shock and deepest sympathy. George Breitner wrote that he had heard the terrible news in Norway, while Isaac Israëls expressed his regret at never having known Vincent in person.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, who received the card too late to attend his friend’s funeral, also sent his condolences.

Cemetery

The graves of the Van Gogh brothers at the cemetery in Auvers

If he could have seen how people behaved toward me when he had left us and the sympathy of so many for himself, he would at this moment not have wanted to die.


Theo to his mother Van Gogh-Carbentus, 1 August 1890

The very last painting

Theo and his brother-in-law Andries (‘Dries’) Bonger sorted through Vincent’s paintings at the inn following his death.

But which was truly his last work?

The very last work

Vincent van Gogh, Tree Roots, 1890

The very last work

According to Dries Bonger, what Vincent painted on the day he shot himself was a forest scene, ‘full of sun and life’: Tree Roots. The canvas is not entirely finished, and might have been intended as a kind of farewell note.

Some of the elms are on the brink of falling from the limestone wall. Their roots have loosened already; their death is inevitable. Was Vincent sketching his own situation?

Vincent van Gogh, Farms at Auvers, 1890, Tate Gallery, London

Also unfinished

The second unfinished painting found after Vincent’s death was this landscape with farms. Dries later submitted it as Village: Final Sketch for an exhibition in Paris.

It is Vincent’s second to last painting, which he probably made the day before his suicide attempt.

The supposed last work

Vincent van Gogh, Wheatfield with Crows, 1890

The supposed last work

For many people, this painting was long believed to be Vincent’s last. Crows and gathering storms are often perceived as ominous, and so this work came to be interpreted as a portent of the artist’s death.

All the same, it cannot have been his final painting, as he completed it in early July 1890. Many more works followed in the remaining weeks, during which Vincent produced almost one a day.

Painters being dead and buried, speak to a following generation or to several following generations through their works. In the life of the painter, death may perhaps not be the most difficult thing


To Theo from Arles, 9 or 10 July 1888

More on Vincent van Gogh

Read the story about Van Gogh and his illness

Explore Vincent's paintings and drawings

Learn more on Vincent's life

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