Revisiting Vincent van Gogh, the Sane Martyr

New Biography Shows that Gunplay, Not Suicide, Led to His Death

Experts on the life of Vincent van Gogh have long been convinced that he was neither insane nor mentally poisoned by his oil paints. His difficult personality, and apparent death wish, were probably related to his having temporal lobe epilepsy, which haunted him since childhood.

              Victims of this form of epilepsy do not have seizures, but they do black out. Worst of all, they feel the “electric storm in the brain” coming on before it takes place. This fills their lives with constant anxiety. To others, it produces a personality that is entirely inexplicable: one that looks crazy.
              This can explain why, for the 37 years of his life, Van Gogh had erratic behavior, was considered insane by his family, had no close friends, and would maim himself, as illustrated by the cut he inflicted on his ear. Despite all this, he painted a thousand brilliant works.
              This week on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” two authors of a new biography of Van Gogh argued that not only was he perfectly sane, but his death was not a suicide. The traditional story has been that Van Gogh shot himself in a wheat field. He borrowed a pistol from the innkeeper to scare away crows, which bothered him as he painted. A ten year investigation into the actual events of those fateful days is now telling a different story. With their 976-page book, Van Gogh: The Life, authors Steve Naifeh and Greg Smith have stirred an electric storm in the art world.
              “What the evidence points to is that this incident [the shooting] took place not in the wheat fields, but in a farmyard,” Naifeh told Morely Shafer on “60 Minutes.” The incident involved two mischievous boys with a gun. “And that it was either an accident or a deliberate act.”
              The two boys, who liked to play cowboys, were known for taunting the odd Van Gogh around the vacation town of Auvers. On this particular day they may have had a pistol (since American cowboys were all the rage in Paris at the time). “Was it playing cowboy in some way that went awry?” Naifeh asked. Or, “Was it teasing with the gun with Vincent lunging out?” Whatever the case, this scenario can explain two things from the police and medical reports. When the police asked Van Gogh if he had tried to commit suicide, he said two things: “Yes, I believe so,” and then added, “Don’t accuse anyone else.” In turn, the doctor’s medical report noted that Van Gogh's wound suggest a gun aimed at an odd angle some distance from the flesh.
              Naifeh and Smith have done their homework. Having visited the French town of Auvers, they found accounts of one resident recalling a gun shot that day in the neighborhood a half mile from the inn where Van Gogh lived. According to the previous account—told now for 121 years—Van Gogh had struggle back from the wheat fields, over rough terrain, for more than a mile with his wound. The half-mile of flat streets better explains how he made it back to the inn, where he died 30 hours later.
              There is also a modern-day account of a wealthy Parisian businessman who, a year before he died, told of how he had borrowed a pistol from the innkeeper’s daughter, but that Van Gogh had stolen it later. In any case, the businessman said, he and his friend—the two boys—had left Auvers for Paris before Van Gogh was shot. So a new picture comes into focus, thanks to what amounts to a CSI Van Gogh: he was shot by the youths, but did not want to get them in trouble.
              “A couple of kids had shot Vincent van Gogh and he decided to basically protect them and accept this as the way to die,” Naifeh said. “These kids had basically done him the favor of shooting him.”
              “So he was covering up his own murder?” Safer asked.
              “Covering up his own murder,” Naifeh agreed.
              The new understanding of Van Gogh’s death is meticulously reconstructed, but finally based on circumstantial evidence. It could well be true. It could also help us better understand Van Gogh the painter.
              First of all, Van Gogh’s approach to painting was not driven by madness or physical disability. He had discovered a personal aesthetic and had mastered it through oil paint, drawing, and colors. In his letters, he spoke of giving up the dark and light contrast of the painting in his native Holland for the brightness of the French Impressionists. He was proud that he could do a painting a day, and once completed a canvas in 45 minutes. He loved portraits: it was his chance to spend time with individuals, since finding lasting friends proved difficult. His “Wheatfield with Crows” (1890) was therefore no his last painting (with its ominous crows, harbingers of death). He actually painted several beautiful and cheerful works before the actual day of the shooting.
              As a second matter, Van Gogh, who once had tried to be a minister like his father, believed that suicide was wrong. Nevertheless, with his tortuous epilepsy and maladjusted life, he might have wished to die, but not by his own hand. If the taunting boys shot him, they did him a favor. He did not turn them in.
              “The miracle is that this alienated person ended up becoming the most popular artist of all time,” Naifeh said. “So he achieved exactly what he set out to achieve. I mean . . . [his paintings] provide consolation for humanity.”