Vincent van Gogh's ear
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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- Last Sunday night at half past eleven a painter named Vincent Vangogh, appeared at the maison de tolérance No 1, asked for a girl called Rachel, and handed her ... his ear with these words:'Keep this object like a treasure.' Then he disappeared. The police, informed of these events, which could only be the work of an unfortunate madman, looked the next morning for this individual, whom they found in bed with scarcely a sign of life.
The poor man was taken to hospital without delay. (Hulsker (1980), pp. 380-2)
The precise chain of events that led to the celebrated incident of van Gogh slicing off his ear is not known reliably in detail. The only account attesting a supposed earlier razor attack on Gauguin comes from Gauguin himself some fifteen years later and biographers agree this account must be considered unreliable and self-serving.<ref name="PG Avant et Après">{{
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}}</ref><ref>Sweetman p. 1</ref><ref>Tralbaut p. 258</ref> It does seem likely, however, that by 23 December 1888 van Gogh had realized that Gauguin was proposing to leave and that there had been some kind of contretemps between the two.<ref>Naifeh and Smith p. 702</ref> That evening van Gogh severed his left ear (wholly or in part, accounts differ) with a razor, inducing a severe haemorrhage.<ref group =note>According to Doiteau & Leroy, the diagonal cut removed the lobe and probably a little more.</ref> He bandaged his wound and then wrapped the ear in paper and delivered the package to a brothel frequented by both him and Gauguin before returning home and collapsing. He was found unconscious the next day by the police <ref group=note>Gauguin, who had spent the night in a nearby hotel, arrived independently at the same time.</ref> and taken to hospital.<ref>Gayford (2007), 277</ref><ref>Martin Bailey, The Art Newspaper, Van Gogh's Own Words After Cutting His Ear Recorded in Paris Newspaper</ref><ref>{{
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}}</ref> The local newspaper reported that van Gogh had given the ear to a prostitute with an instruction to guard it carefully.<ref>Hulsker pp. 380-2</ref> In Gauguin's later account he implies that in fact van Gogh had left it with the doorman as a memento for Gauguin.<ref name="PG Avant et Après"/> Van Gogh himself had no recollection of these events and it is plain that he had suffered an acute psychotic episode.<ref>Naifeh and Smith p. 707-8</ref> Family letters of the time make it clear that the event had not been unexpected.<ref name="VGM Concordance">{{
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}}</ref> He had suffered a nervous collapse in Antwerp some three years before and as early as 1880 his father had proposed committing him to an asylum (at Gheel).<ref>Naifeh and Smith pp. 488-9, pp, 209-10</ref> The hospital diagnosis was "generalized delirium", and within a few days van Gogh was sectioned.<ref name="VGM Concordance"/>
During the initial few days of his treatment van Gogh repeatedly asked for Gauguin, but Gauguin stayed away. Gauguin told one of the policeman attending the case, "Be kind enough, Monsieur, to awaken this man with great care, and if he asks for me tell him I have left for Paris; the sight of me might prove fatal for him."<ref name="Gayford, 284">Gayford, 284</ref> Gauguin wrote of Van Gogh, "His state is worse, he wants to sleep with the patients, chase the nurses, and washes himself in the coal bucket. That is to say, he continues the biblical mortifications."<ref name="Gayford, 284"/><ref name="VGM Concordance"/> Theo – notified by Gauguin – visited, as did both Madame Ginoux and Roulin. Gauguin left Arles and never saw Van Gogh again.<ref group=note>They continued to correspond and in 1890 Gauguin proposed they form an artist studio in Antwerp. See Pickvance (1986), 62</ref>
See also
