Van Gogh's ear was cut off by friend Gauguin

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/5274073/Van-Goghs-ear-was-cut-off-by-friend-Gauguin-with-a-sword.html

Van Gogh's ear 'was cut off by friend Gauguin with a sword'
By Henry Samuel in Paris
05 May 2009

He is known as the tortured genius who cut off his own ear as he struggled with mental illness after the breakdown of his friendship with a fellow artist.

But a new study claims Vincent Van Gogh may have made up the story to protect painter Paul Gauguin who actually lopped it off with a sword during an argument.

German art historians say the true version of events never surfaced as the two men both kept a "pact of silence" – Gauguin to avoid prosecution and Van Gogh in a vain attempt to keep a friend with whom he was hopelessly infatuated.

In Van Gogh's Ear: Paul Gauguin and the Pact of Silence, Hans Kaufmann and Rita Wildegans claim it was the sword attack, not Van Gogh's madness, that led him to commit suicide two years later.

The prevailing theory is that the Dutchman, who painted Sunflowers and the Potato Eaters, almost bled to death after slashing his own ear with a razor in a fit of lunacy on the night of December 23, 1888.

He is said to have wrapped it in cloth and handed it to a prostitute in a nearby brothel.

However, the new work from experts in Hamburg offers a very different version.

Gauguin, an excellent fencer, was planning to leave Van Gogh's "Yellow House" in Arles, southwestern France, after an unhappy stay.

He had walked out of the house with his baggage and his trusty épée in hand, but was followed by the troubled Van Gogh, who had earlier thrown a glass at him.

As the pair approached a bordello, their row intensified, and Gauguin cut off Van Gogh's left earlobe with his sword – either in anger or self-defence.

He then threw the weapon in the Rhône. Van Gogh delivered the ear to the prostitute and staggered home, where police discovered him the following day, the new account claims.

Gauguin had undoubtedly been staying with Van Gogh, but most experts think he had disappeared before the ear incident.

Although the historians provide no "smoking gun" to back up their claims, they argue theirs is the most logical interpretation, and explains why in his final recorded words to Gauguin, Van Gogh writes: "You are quiet, I will be, too".

They cite correspondence between Vincent and his brother, Theo, in which the painter hints at what happened without directly breaking the "pact of silence" made with his estranged friend.

He mentions Gauguin's request to recover his fencing mask and gloves from Arles, but not the épée.

Mr Kaufmann told the Daily Telegraph: "He writes that it's lucky Gauguin doesn't have a machine gun or other firearms, that he's stronger than him and that his 'passions' are stronger."

He makes reference to a French novel in which the narrator thinks he has killed his friend by cutting the climbing rope linking them.

"Afterwards, he says to himself: 'nobody has seen me commit my crime, and nothing can prevent me from inventing a story which would hide the truth'," said Mr Kaufmann. "This was a message to his brother."

He also pointed to one of Van Gogh's sketches of an ear, with the word "ictus" – the Latin term used in fencing to mean a hit. The authors believe that curious zigzags above the ear represent Gauguin's Zoro-like sword-stroke.

The historians also contend that, while Van Gogh clearly suffered from seizures, he had not gone mad at this stage.

"That was propaganda and all part of Gauguin's self-defence strategy," said Mr Kaufmann. "But it was a shock from which Vincent never recovered, led to the aggravation of his disease and paved the way to his suicide," he said.

Other Van Gogh experts, including those at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, disagree with the authors' claims. However, Nina Zimmer, the curator of a major Van Gogh exhibition in Basel, was less sure: "Perhaps they're right, but all the hypotheses are valid given the lack of material," she told Le Figaro.