Van Gogh's last words. The mystery of Van Gogh's madness: what does his last painting say? I consider life without love to be a sinful, immoral state.

1. Vincent Willem van Gogh was born in the south of the Netherlands to a Protestant pastor, Theodore van Gogh, and Anna Cornelia, the daughter of a respected bookbinder and bookseller.

2. The parents wanted to name their first child, who was born one year old, with the same name. before Vincent and died on the first day. In addition to the future artist, the family had five more children.

3. In the family, Vincent was considered a difficult and wayward child, when, outside the family, he showed the opposite traits of his temperament: in the eyes of his neighbors, he was a quiet, friendly and sweet child.

4. Vincent dropped out of school multiple times—he dropped out of school as a child; Later, in an effort to become a pastor like his father, he prepared to take university exams for theology department, but ultimately became disillusioned with his studies and dropped out. Wanting to enroll in an Evangelical school, Vincent considered the fees to be discriminatory and refused to attend. Turning to painting, Van Gogh began attending classes at the Royal Academy fine arts, but dropped out of school a year later.

5. Van Gogh took up painting when he was already mature man, and in just 10 years he went from a novice artist to a master who changed the idea of ​​fine art.

6. Over the course of 10 years, Vincent Van Gogh created more than 2 thousand works, of which about 860 were oil paintings.

7. Vincent developed a love for art and painting through his work as an art dealer at the large art firm Goupil & Cie, which belonged to his uncle Vincent.

8. Vincent was in love with his cousin Kay Vos-Stricker, who was a widow. He met her when she was staying with her son at his parents' house. Kee rejected his feelings, but Vincent continued his courtship, which turned all his relatives against him.

9. Absence art education affected Van Gogh's inability to paint human figures. Ultimately devoid of grace and smooth lines in human images became one of the fundamental features of his style.

10. One of the most famous paintings Van Gogh's Starry Night was painted in 1889 while the artist was in a mental hospital in France.

11. According to the generally accepted version, Van Gogh cut off his earlobe during a quarrel with Paul Gauguin, when he came to the city where Vincent lived to discuss issues of creating a painting workshop. Unable to find a compromise in resolving the topic so trembling to Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin decided to leave the city. After a heated argument, Vincent grabbed a razor and attacked his friend, who fled the house. On the same night, Van Gogh cut off his earlobe, and not his entire ear, as some legends believed. According to the most common version, he did this in a fit of repentance.

12. According to estimates from auctions and private sales, Van Gogh's works, along with his works, rank high on the list of the most expensive paintings ever sold in the world.

13. A crater on Mercury is named after Vincent van Gogh.

14. The legend that during Van Gogh’s lifetime only one of his paintings, “Red Vineyards at Arles,” was sold is incorrect. In fact, the painting sold for 400 francs was Vincent’s breakthrough into the world of serious prices, but in addition to it, at least 14 more works by the artist were sold. There is simply no accurate evidence of the remaining works, so in reality there could have been more sales.

15. Towards the end of his life, Vincent painted very quickly - he could finish his painting from start to finish in 2 hours. However, he always quoted his favorite expression American artist Whistler: “I did it in two hours, but I worked for years to do something worthwhile in those two hours.”

16. Legends that Van Gogh's mental disorder helped the artist to look into depths that were inaccessible ordinary people, are also untrue. Seizures that were similar to epilepsy, for which he was treated at psychiatric clinic, began only in the last year and a half of his life. Moreover, it was precisely during the period of exacerbation of the disease that Vincent could not write.

17. Native younger brother Van Gogh, Theo (Theodorus), was of great importance for the artist. Throughout his life, his brother provided Vincent with moral and financial support. Theo, being 4 years younger than his brother, fell ill with a nervous disorder after Van Gogh’s death and died just six months later.

18. According to experts, if not for the almost simultaneous early death both brothers, fame could have come to Van Gogh back in the mid-1890s and the artist could have become a rich man.

19. Vincent Van Gogh died in 1890 from a gunshot to the chest. Going out for a walk with drawing materials, the artist shot himself in the heart area from a revolver, bought to scare away birds while working in the open air, but the bullet passed lower. 29 hours later he died from loss of blood.

20. The Vincent Van Gogh Museum, which has the world's largest collection of Van Gogh's works, opened in Amsterdam in 1973. It is the second most popular museum in the Netherlands, after the Rijksmuseum. 85% of visitors to the Vincent Van Gogh Museum come from other countries.

British art historians spent more than 10 years examining documents and letters unknown to the general public related to the artist Vincent van Gogh, and came to the conclusion that the master, contrary to the official version, was not a suicide. Researchers believe that the great Dutch artist shot dead, the British broadcaster BBC reports.

Shortly before his death, Vincent Van Gogh settled in one of the hotels in the French city of Auvers-sur-Oise. The master went to work in a nearby field, which is depicted in his last painting, “Wheat Field with Crows” (1890). It is believed that during one of these walks, the great post-impressionist shot himself in the chest, but the bullet did not hit his heart, so the artist was able to, pressing the wound, get to the bed in his room and ask to call a doctor. However, it was not possible to save the great artist.

For a long time, this version of Van Gogh’s death was considered official, although many researchers of the artist’s work and life noted that there were many blank spots in this story. This point of view is also shared by British art critics Steven Nayfeh and Gregory White Smith, whose book “Van Gogh: The Life” was published on Monday.

Nayfeh and Smith spent more than 10 years studying the artist's little-known letters, as well as various documents related to him. Including police reports from 1890 and testimony from Van Gogh’s acquaintances and neighbors. British art historians have processed more than 28,000 documents, most of which have never been translated into English or other languages. Nayfekh and Smith were assisted by four professional Dutch philologists.

While working on the book, British researchers concluded that Van Gogh, who until today was believed to have shot himself, was in fact murdered. The British note that, according to police reports, the bullet entered the artist’s stomach at a sharp angle rather than at a right angle, which is unlikely to have happened if Van Gogh had actually committed suicide.

According to eyewitnesses, Van Gogh loved to socialize and drink with two 16-year-old teenagers from Auvers-sur-Oise, who were seen in the artist’s company on the last day of his life. Van Gogh's neighbors said that one of the young men was dressed in a cowboy costume and had a faulty pistol. Nayfeh and Smith believe that Van Gogh was accidentally shot from it during the game.

A similar version of the master’s death was expressed by the famous art critic John Renwald back in the 1930s. British researchers believe that the artist made the incident look like suicide in order to protect young people from punishment. According to Gregory Smith, Van Gogh did not strive for death, however, when faced with it, he did not resist. Smith writes that the master was very worried about being a burden to his brother Theo, who fully supported the artist, whose work was not selling. Van Gogh decided that his death would relieve his brother of hardships, the British believe.

Steven Nayfeh and Gregory White Smith also write that Van Gogh was so bad relationship with his father, a pastor, that when he died, many of the artist’s relatives began to accuse Vincent of murdering the head of the Van Gogh family. Vincent van Gogh died on July 29, 1890 at the age of 37.

When 37-year-old Vincent Van Gogh died on July 29, 1890, his work was virtually unknown. Today his paintings are worth eye-popping sums and decorate best museums peace.

125 years after the death of the great Dutch painter the time has come to learn more about him and dispel some of the myths with which, like the entire history of art, his biography is full.

He changed several jobs before becoming an artist

The son of a minister, Van Gogh began working at age 16. His uncle took him on as a trainee as an art dealer in The Hague. He had occasion to travel to London and Paris, where the company's branches were located. In 1876 he was fired. After that he worked for some time school teacher in England, then as a bookstore salesman. From 1878 he served as a preacher in Belgium. Van Gogh was in need, he had to sleep on the floor, but less than a year later he was fired from this post. Only after this did he finally become an artist and did not change his occupation again. In this field he became famous, however, posthumously.

Van Gogh's career as an artist was short

In 1881, the self-taught Dutch artist returned to the Netherlands, where he devoted himself to painting. He was supported financially and materially by his younger brother Theodore, a successful art dealer. In 1886, the brothers settled in Paris, and these two years in the French capital turned out to be fateful. Van Gogh took part in exhibitions of the Impressionists and Neo-Impressionists; he began to use a light and bright palette and experiment with brush stroke techniques. The artist spent the last two years of his life in the south of France, where he created a number of his most famous paintings.

In his entire ten-year career, he sold only a few of his more than 850 paintings. His drawings (about 1,300 of them remained) were then unclaimed.

Most likely he didn't cut off his own ear.

In February 1888, after living in Paris for two years, Van Gogh moved to the south of France, to the city of Arles, where he hoped to found a community of artists. He was accompanied by Paul Gauguin, with whom he became friends in Paris. The officially accepted version of events is as follows:

On the night of December 23, 1888, they quarreled and Gauguin left. Van Gogh, armed with a razor, pursued his friend, but, not catching up, returned home and, in frustration, partially cut off his left ear, then wrapped it in newspaper and gave it to some prostitute.

In 2009, two German scientists published a book in which they suggested that Gauguin, being a good swordsman, cut off part of Van Gogh's ear with a saber during a duel. According to this theory, Van Gogh, in the name of friendship, agreed to hide the truth, otherwise Gauguin would have faced prison.

The most famous paintings were painted by him in a psychiatric clinic

In May 1889, Van Gogh asked for help from mental asylum Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, located in a former monastery of the city of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in Southern France. The artist was initially diagnosed with epilepsy, but examination also revealed bipolar disorder, alcoholism and metabolic disorders. Treatment consisted mainly of baths. He remained in the hospital for a year and painted a number of landscapes there. Over one hundred paintings from this period include some of his most famous works, such as " Starlight Night"(acquired by the New York Museum contemporary art in 1941) and “Irises” (purchased by an industrialist from Australia in 1987 for a then-record sum of $53.9 million)

According to sociologists, three artists are the most famous in the world: Leonardo da Vinci, Vincent Van Gogh and Pablo Picasso. Leonardo is “responsible” for the art of the Old Masters, Van Gogh for the impressionists and post-impressionists of the 19th century, and Picasso for the abstract and modernists of the 20th century. Moreover, if Leonardo appears in the eyes of the public not so much as a painter, but as a universal genius, and Picasso as a fashionable “socialite” and public figure- a fighter for peace, then Van Gogh personifies the artist. He is considered a lone crazy genius and a martyr who did not think about fame and money. However, this image, to which everyone is accustomed, is nothing more than a myth that was used to “promote” Van Gogh and sell his paintings at a profit.

The legend about the artist is based on a true fact - he took up painting when he was already a mature man, and in just ten years he “ran” the path from a novice artist to a master who revolutionized the idea of ​​fine art. All this, even during Van Gogh’s lifetime, was perceived as a “miracle” with no real explanation. The artist’s biography was not replete with adventures, such as the fate of Paul Gauguin, who managed to be both a stockbroker and a sailor, and died of leprosy, exotic for the European man in the street, on the no less exotic Hiva Oa, one of the Marquesas Islands. Van Gogh was a “boring worker”, and, except for the strange mental attacks that appeared in him shortly before his death, and this death itself as a result of a suicide attempt, the myth-makers had nothing to cling to. But these few “trump cards” were played by real masters of their craft.

The main creator of the Legend of the Master was the German gallery owner and art critic Julius Meyer-Graefe. He quickly realized the scale of the great Dutchman’s genius, and most importantly, the market potential of his paintings. In 1893, a twenty-six-year-old gallery owner purchased the painting “A Couple in Love” and started thinking about “advertising” a promising product. Possessing a lively pen, Meyer-Graefe decided to write a biography of the artist that would be attractive to collectors and art lovers. He did not find him alive and therefore was “free” from personal impressions that burdened the master’s contemporaries. In addition, Van Gogh was born and raised in Holland, and finally developed as a painter in France. In Germany, where Meyer-Graefe began to introduce the legend, no one knew anything about the artist, and the gallery owner and art critic began with “ clean slate" He did not immediately “find” the image of that crazy lone genius that everyone now knows. At first Meyer's Van Gogh was " healthy person from the people”, and his work - “harmony between art and life” and the herald of a new Great Style, which Meyer-Graefe considered Art Nouveau. But modernism fizzled out in a matter of years, and Van Gogh, under the pen of an enterprising German, “retrained” as an avant-garde rebel who led the fight against mossy academic realists. Van Gogh the anarchist was popular in the circles of artistic bohemia, but scared off the average person. And only the “third edition” of the legend satisfied everyone. In a 1921 “scientific monograph” entitled “Vincent,” with the subtitle, unusual for literature of this kind, “The Novel of the God-Seeker,” Meyer-Graefe presented to the public a holy madman whose hand was guided by God. The highlight of this “biography” was the story of a severed ear and creative madness that elevated a small, lonely man like Akaki Akakievich Bashmachkin to the heights of genius.

Vincent Van Gogh. 1873

The real Vincent van Gogh had little in common with "Vincent" Meyer-Graefe. To begin with, he graduated from a prestigious private gymnasium, spoke and wrote fluently in three languages, read a lot, which earned him the nickname Spinoza in Parisian artistic circles. Behind Van Gogh stood big family, who never left him without support, although she was not happy with his experiments. His grandfather was a renowned bookbinder of ancient manuscripts, working for several European courts, three of his uncles were successful art dealers, and one was an admiral and port master in Antwerp, in his house he lived while studying in that city. The real Van Gogh was a rather sober and pragmatic person.

For example, one of the central “God-seeking” episodes of the “going to the people” legend was the fact that in 1879 Van Gogh was a preacher in the Belgian mining district of Borinage. What Meyer-Graefe and his followers didn’t come up with! Here there is a “break with the environment” and “the desire to suffer along with the wretched and beggars.” Everything is explained simply. Vincent decided to follow in his father's footsteps and become a priest. In order to be ordained, it was necessary to study at the seminary for five years. Or - take an accelerated course in three years at an evangelical school using a simplified program, and even for free. All this was preceded by a mandatory six-month “experience” as a missionary in the outback. So Van Gogh went to the miners. Of course, he was a humanist, he tried to help these people, but he did not even think about getting close to them, always remaining a member of the middle class. After serving his sentence in Borinage, Van Gogh decided to enroll in an evangelical school, and then it turned out that the rules had changed and Dutchmen like him, unlike the Flemings, had to pay tuition. After this, the offended “missionary” left religion and decided to become an artist.

And this choice is also not accidental. Van Gogh was a professional art dealer - an art dealer in the largest company "Goupil". His partner in it was his uncle Vincent, after whom the young Dutchman was named. He patronized him. Goupil played a leading role in Europe in the trade of old masters and solid modern academic paintings, but was not afraid to sell “moderate innovators” like the Barbizons. For 7 years Van Gogh made a difficult career based on family traditions antique business. From the Amsterdam branch he moved first to The Hague, then to London and finally to the firm's headquarters in Paris. Over the years, the nephew of the co-owner of Gupil went through a serious school, learned the basic European museums and many closed private collections, became a real expert in painting not only by Rembrandt and the small Dutch, but also by the French - from Ingres to Delacroix. “Being surrounded by paintings,” he wrote, “I was inflamed with a frantic love for them, reaching the point of frenzy.” His idol was French artist Jean François Millet, who became famous at that time for his “peasant” paintings, which Goupil sold at prices of tens of thousands of francs.

The artist's brother Theodore Van Gogh

Van Gogh was going to become such a successful “writer of the everyday life of the lower classes” like Millet, using his knowledge of the life of miners and peasants, gleaned from the Borinage. Contrary to legend, the art dealer Van Gogh was not a brilliant amateur like such “artists Sunday", like customs officer Russo or conductor Pirosmani. Having behind him a fundamental acquaintance with the history and theory of art, as well as with the practice of trading in it, the persistent Dutchman, at the age of twenty-seven, began a systematic study of the craft of painting. He began by drawing using the latest special textbooks, which were sent to him by art dealers from all over Europe. Van Gogh's hand was placed by his relative, the artist from The Hague Anton Mauwe, to whom the grateful student later dedicated one of his paintings. Van Gogh even entered first the Brussels and then the Antwerp Academy of Arts, where he studied for three months until he went to Paris.

The newly-minted artist was persuaded to go there in 1886 by his younger brother Theodore. This former successful art dealer on the rise played key role in the fate of the master. Theo advised Vincent to give up “peasant” painting, explaining that it was already a “plowed field.” And, besides, “black paintings” like “The Potato Eaters” have always sold worse than light and joyful art. Another thing is the “light painting” of the Impressionists, literally created for success: all sunshine and celebration. The public will definitely appreciate it sooner or later.

Theo Seer

So Van Gogh ended up in the capital of the “new art” - Paris and, on Theo’s advice, he entered the private studio of Fernand Cormon, which was then a “training ground” for a new generation of experimental artists. There, the Dutchman became close friends with such future pillars of post-impressionism as Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Emile Bernard and Lucien Pissarro. Van Gogh studied anatomy, painted from plaster casts and literally absorbed all the new ideas that were seething in Paris.

Theo introduces him to leading art critics and his artist clients, among whom were not only the established Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro, Auguste Renoir and Edgar Degas, but also the “rising stars” Signac and Gauguin. By the time Vincent arrived in Paris, his brother was the head of the “experimental” branch of Goupil in Montmartre. A man with a keen sense of new things and an excellent businessman, Theo was one of the first to see the advance new era in art. He persuaded the conservative leadership of Gupil to allow him to take the risk of engaging in trade." light painting" In the gallery, Theo held personal exhibitions of Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet and other impressionists, to whom Paris began to gradually get used to. On the floor above, in his own apartment, he arranged “changing exhibitions” of paintings by daring youth, which “Goupil” was afraid to show officially. This was the prototype of the elite “apartment exhibitions” that became fashionable in the 20th century, and Vincent’s works became their highlight.

Back in 1884, the Van Gogh brothers entered into an agreement among themselves. Theo, in exchange for Vincent's paintings, pays him 220 francs a month and provides him with brushes, canvases and paints best quality. By the way, thanks to this, Van Gogh’s paintings, unlike the works of Gauguin and Toulouse-Lautrec, who painted on anything due to lack of money, were so well preserved. 220 francs was a quarter of the monthly salary of a doctor or lawyer. Postman Joseph Roulin in Arles, whom legend made something of a patron of the “beggar” Van Gogh, received half as much and, unlike the lonely artist, fed a family with three children. Van Gogh even had enough money to create a collection Japanese prints. In addition, Theo supplied his brother with “overall clothes”: blouses and famous hats, necessary books and reproductions. He also paid for Vincent's treatment.

None of this was simple charity. The brothers drew up an ambitious plan - to create a market for paintings by the Post-Impressionists, the generation of artists that replaced Monet and his friends. Moreover, with Vincent Van Gogh as one of the leaders of this generation. To combine the seemingly incompatible - the risky avant-garde art of the bohemian world and commercial success in the spirit of the respectable Goupil. Here they were almost a century ahead of their time: only Andy Warhol and other American pop-partyists managed to immediately get rich from avant-garde art.

"Unrecognized"

Overall, Vincent van Gogh's position was unique. He worked as a contract artist for an art dealer, who was one of the key figures in the “light painting” market. And this art dealer was his brother. The restless tramp Gauguin, for example, who counted every franc, could only dream of such a situation. Moreover, Vincent was not a simple puppet in the hands of businessman Theo. Nor was he unmercenary, who did not want to sell his paintings to profane people, which he gave away freely to “kindred souls,” as Meyer-Graefe wrote. Van Gogh, like everyone else normal person, wanted recognition not from distant descendants, but during his lifetime. Confessions important sign which for him was money. And being a former art dealer himself, he knew how to achieve this.

One of the main themes of his letters to Theo is not at all God-seeking, but discussions about what needs to be done in order to profitably sell paintings, and which paintings will quickly find their way to the heart of the buyer. To promote himself on the market, he came up with an impeccable formula: “Nothing will help us sell our paintings better than their recognition.” good decoration for middle class homes." To clearly show how Post-Impressionist paintings would “look” in a bourgeois interior, Van Gogh himself organized two exhibitions in the Tambourine cafe and the La Forche restaurant in Paris in 1887 and even sold several works from them. Later, the legend played up this fact as an act of despair of the artist, whom no one wanted to let into normal exhibitions.

Meanwhile, he is a regular participant in exhibitions at the Salon des Indépendants and the Free Theater - the most fashionable places for Parisian intellectuals of that time. His paintings are exhibited by art dealers Arsene Portier, George Thomas, Pierre Martin and Tanguy. The great Cezanne got the opportunity to show his work at personal exhibition only at the age of 56, after nearly four decades of hard labor. While the works of Vincent, an artist with six years of experience, could be seen at any time at Theo’s “apartment exhibition”, where the entire artistic elite of the capital of the art world, Paris, visited.

The real Van Gogh is least like the hermit from the legend. He belongs among the leading artists of the era, the most convincing evidence of which is several portraits of the Dutchman painted by Toulouse-Lautrec, Roussel, and Bernard. Lucien Pissarro depicted him talking with the most influential art critic of those years, Fenelon. Camille Pissarro remembered Van Gogh for the fact that he did not hesitate to stop the person he needed on the street and show his paintings right next to the wall of some house. It is simply impossible to imagine the real hermit Cezanne in such a situation.

The legend firmly established the idea that Van Gogh was unrecognized, that during his lifetime only one of his paintings, “Red Vineyards in Arles,” was sold, which now hangs in the Moscow Museum fine arts named after A.S. Pushkin. In fact, the sale of this painting from an exhibition in Brussels in 1890 for 400 francs was Van Gogh's breakthrough into the world of serious prices. He sold no worse than his contemporaries Seurat or Gauguin. According to documents, it is known that fourteen works were bought from the artist. The first to do so was a family friend, the Dutch art dealer Tersteeg, in February 1882, and Vincent wrote to Theo: “The first sheep has crossed the bridge.” In reality, there were more sales; there is simply no accurate evidence of the rest.

As for unrecognized status, since 1888 famous critics Gustave Kahn and Felix Fenelon, in their reviews of exhibitions of the “independent”, as the avant-garde artists were called then, highlight fresh and bright works Van Gogh. The critic Octave Mirbeau advised Rodin to buy his paintings. They were in the collection of such a discerning connoisseur as Edgar Degas. During his lifetime, Vincent read in the Mercure de France newspaper that he great artist, heir to Rembrandt and Hals. I wrote this in my entire article dedicated to creativity"the amazing Dutchman" rising star"New Criticism" Henri Aurier. He intended to create a biography of Van Gogh, but unfortunately died of tuberculosis shortly after the death of the artist himself.

But Meyer-Graefe published a “biography”, and in it he especially described the “intuitive, free from the shackles of reason” process of Van Gogh’s creativity.

“Vincent painted in a blind, unconscious rapture. His temperament spilled out onto the canvas. The trees screamed, the clouds hunted each other. The sun gaped like a blinding hole leading to chaos.”

The easiest way to refute this idea of ​​​​Van Gogh is in the words of the artist himself: “Great is created not only by impulsive action, but also by the complicity of many things that were brought to a single whole... With art, as with everything else: great is not something sometimes random, but must be created by persistent willpower.”

The vast majority of Van Gogh’s letters are devoted to issues of the “kitchen” of painting: setting tasks, materials, technique. The case is almost unprecedented in the history of art. The Dutchman was a real workaholic and argued: “In art you have to work like several blacks and peel off your skin.” At the end of his life, he really painted very quickly; he could complete a painting from start to finish in two hours. But at the same time he kept repeating the favorite expression of the American artist Whistler: “I did it in two hours, but I worked for years to do something worthwhile in those two hours.”

Van Gogh did not write on a whim - he worked long and hard on the same motif. In the city of Arles, where he set up his workshop after leaving Paris, he began a series of 30 works connected by the common creative task of “Contrast”. Contrast in color, thematic, composition. For example, pandan "Cafe in Arles" and "Room in Arles". In the first picture there is darkness and tension, in the second there is light and harmony. In the same row there are several variants of his famous “Sunflowers”. The entire series was conceived as an example of decorating a “middle class home.” We have thoughtful creative and market strategies from start to finish. After looking at his paintings at the “independent” exhibition, Gauguin wrote: “You are the only thinking artist of all.”

The cornerstone of the Van Gogh legend is his madness. Allegedly, only it allowed him to look into such depths that are inaccessible to mere mortals. But the artist was not half-mad with flashes of genius from his youth. Periods of depression, accompanied by seizures similar to epilepsy, for which he was treated in a psychiatric clinic, began only in the last year and a half of his life. Doctors saw this as the effect of absinthe, an alcoholic drink infused with wormwood, whose destructive effect on nervous system became known only in the 20th century. Moreover, it was precisely during the period of exacerbation of the disease that the artist could not write. So mental disorder did not “help” Van Gogh’s genius, but hindered it.

Very doubtful famous story with an ear. It turned out that Van Gogh could not cut it off at the root; he would simply bleed to death, because he was given help only 10 hours after the incident. Only his lobe was cut off, as stated in the medical report. And who did it? There is a version that this happened during a quarrel with Gauguin that took place that day. Experienced in sailor fights, Gauguin slashed Van Gogh in the ear, and he had a nervous attack from the whole experience. Later, to justify his behavior, Gauguin made up a story that Van Gogh, in a fit of madness, chased him with a razor in his hands, and then injured himself.

Even the painting “Room in Arles,” whose curved space was considered to capture Van Gogh’s insane state, turned out to be surprisingly realistic. Plans were found for the house in which the artist lived in Arles. The walls and ceiling of his home were indeed sloping. Van Gogh never painted by moonlight with candles attached to his hat. But the creators of the legend always handled facts freely. For example, they announced the ominous picture “Wheat Field”, with a road stretching into the distance, covered with a flock of ravens. the last canvas master predicting his death. But it is well known that after it he wrote more whole line works where the ill-fated field is depicted as compressed.

The “know-how” of the main author of the Van Gogh myth, Julius Meyer-Graeff, is not just a lie, but a presentation of fictitious events mixed with genuine facts, and even in the form of an impeccable scientific work. For example, a true fact - Van Gogh loved to work under open air because he could not stand the smell of turpentine, which is used to dilute paints, - the “biographer” used it as the basis for a fantastic version of the reason for the master’s suicide. Allegedly, Van Gogh fell in love with the sun, the source of his inspiration, and did not allow himself to cover his head with a hat while standing under its burning rays. All his hair burned off, the sun burned his unprotected skull, he went crazy and committed suicide. In Van Gogh's late self-portraits and images dead artist, made by his friends, it is clear that he did not lose hair on his head until his death.

"Epiphanies of the Holy Fool"

Van Gogh shot himself on July 27, 1890, after his mental crisis seemed to have been overcome. Shortly before this, he was discharged from the clinic with the conclusion: “Recovered.” The very fact that the owner of the furnished rooms in Auvers, where Van Gogh lived in recent months of his life, he entrusted him with a revolver, which the artist needed to scare away crows while working on sketches, suggests that he behaved absolutely normally. Today, doctors agree that suicide did not occur during a seizure, but was the result of a confluence of external circumstances. Theo got married, had a child, and Vincent was depressed by the thought that his brother would only be concerned with his family, and not with their plan to conquer the art world.

After the fatal shot, Van Gogh lived for two more days, was surprisingly calm and steadfastly endured suffering. He died in the arms of his inconsolable brother, who was never able to recover from this loss and died six months later. The Goupil company sold for next to nothing all the works of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists that Theo Van Gogh had accumulated in a gallery in Montmartre, and closed the experiment with “light painting.” Theo's widow Johanna Van Gogh-Bonger took Vincent van Gogh's paintings to Holland. Only at the beginning of the 20th century did the great Dutchman achieve total fame. According to experts, if not for the almost simultaneous early death of both brothers, this would have happened back in the mid-1890s and Van Gogh would have been a very rich man. But fate decreed otherwise. People like Meyer-Graefe began to reap the fruits of the labors of the great painter Vincent and the great gallery owner Theo.

Who did Vincent possess?

The novel about the God-seeker “Vincent” by an enterprising German came in handy in the context of the collapse of ideals after the massacre of the First World War. Art martyr and madman, mystical creativity who appeared under the pen of Meyer-Graefe as something like new religion, such a Van Gogh captured the imagination of both jaded intellectuals and inexperienced ordinary people. The legend pushed into the background not only the biography of the real artist, but also distorted the idea of ​​his paintings. They were seen as some kind of mishmash of colors, in which the prophetic “insights” of the holy fool were discerned. Meyer-Graefe turned into the main connoisseur of the “mystical Dutchman” and began not only to trade in Van Gogh’s paintings, but also to issue certificates of authenticity for large sums of money for works that appeared under Van Gogh’s name on the art market.

In the mid-1920s, a certain Otto Wacker came to him, performing erotic dances in Berlin cabarets under the pseudonym Olinto Lovel. He showed several paintings signed "Vincent", painted in the spirit of the legend. Meyer-Graefe was delighted and immediately confirmed their authenticity. In total, Wacker, who opened his own gallery in the fashionable Potsdamerplatz district, put more than 30 Van Goghs on the market until rumors spread that they were fake. Since the amount involved was very large, the police intervened in the matter. At the trial, the dancer-gallery owner told a tale of “provenance”, which he “fed” his gullible clients. He allegedly acquired the paintings from a Russian aristocrat, who bought them at the beginning of the century, and during the revolution managed to take them from Russia to Switzerland. Wacker did not name, claiming that the Bolsheviks, embittered by the loss of the “national treasure,” would destroy the aristocrat’s family remaining in Soviet Russia.

In the battle of experts, which unfolded in April 1932 in the courtroom of the Berlin district of Moabit, Meyer-Graefe and his supporters fought hard for the authenticity of the Wacker Van Goghs. But the police raided the studio of the dancer’s brother and father, who were artists, and found 16 brand-new Van Goghs. Technological examination showed that they are identical to the sold paintings. In addition, chemists found that when creating the “paintings of the Russian aristocrat,” paints were used that appeared only after Van Gogh’s death. Having learned about this, one of the “experts” who supported Meyer-Graefe and Wacker said to the stunned judge: “How do you know that after his death Vincent did not inhabit a congenial body and is not still creating?”

Wacker received three years in prison, and Meyer-Graefe's reputation was destroyed. He soon died, but the legend, despite everything, continues to live to this day. It is on this basis American writer Irving Stone wrote his best-selling book Lust for Life in 1934, and Hollywood director Vincente Minnelli made a film about Van Gogh in 1956. The role of the artist was played by actor Kirk Douglas. The film earned an Oscar and finally established in the minds of millions of people the image of a half-mad genius who took upon himself all the sins of the world. Then the American period in the canonization of Van Gogh was replaced by the Japanese.

In the Land of the Rising Sun, thanks to legend, the great Dutchman began to be considered something between a Buddhist monk and a samurai who committed hara-kiri. In 1987, Yasuda bought Van Gogh's Sunflowers at an auction in London for $40 million. Three years later, eccentric billionaire Ryoto Saito, who associated himself with the Vincent of legend, paid $82 million at auction in New York for Van Gogh's Portrait of Doctor Gachet. For a whole decade it was the most expensive painting in the world. According to Saito’s will, she was supposed to be burned with him after his death, but the creditors of the Japanese man, who was bankrupt by that time, did not allow this to happen.

While the world was rocked by scandals surrounding the name of Van Gogh, art historians, restorers, archivists and even doctors studied step by step authentic life and the artist's creativity. A huge role in this was played by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, created in 1972 on the basis of the collection that was given to Holland by Theo Van Gogh’s son, who bore the name of his great uncle. The museum began checking all Van Gogh's paintings in the world, weeding out several dozen fakes, and did a great job of preparing scientific publication correspondence between brothers.

But, despite the enormous efforts of both the museum staff and such luminaries of Van Gogh studies as the Canadian Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharova or the Dutchman Jan Halsker, the legend of Van Gogh does not die. It lives its own life, giving rise to new films, books and performances about the “mad saint Vincent”, who has nothing in common with the great worker and pioneer of new paths in art, Vincent Van Gogh. This is how man is made: romantic fairy tale For him, the “prose of life” is always more attractive, no matter how great it may be.

Illustration copyright Van Gogh

On a summer day in 1890, Vincent Van Gogh shot himself in a field outside Paris. A columnist examines the painting he was working on that morning to see what it says about the artist's state of mind.

On July 27, 1890, Vincent Van Gogh walked out into a wheat field behind a castle in the French village of Auvers-sur-Oise, a few kilometers from Paris, and shot himself in the chest.

By that time, the artist had already suffered from mental illness- ever since, on a December evening in 1888, during his life in the city of Arles in French Provence, the unfortunate man cut off his left ear with a razor.

After this, he periodically had attacks that undermined his strength and after which he was in a state of clouded consciousness for several days, or even weeks, or lost touch with reality.

However, in the intervals between breakdowns his mind was calm and clear, and the artist could paint pictures.

Moreover, his stay in Auvers, where he arrived in May 1890 after leaving a psychiatric hospital, became the most fruitful stage of his creative life: in 70 days he created 75 paintings and more than a hundred drawings and sketches.

Dying, Van Gogh said: “That’s how I wanted to leave!”

However, despite this, he felt increasingly lonely and could not find a place for himself, convincing himself that his life was in vain.

Eventually he got hold of a small revolver that belonged to the owner of the house he was renting in Auvers.

It was this weapon that he took with him into the field on that fateful Sunday afternoon at the end of July.

However, he only got his hands on a pocket revolver, not very powerful, so when the artist pulled the trigger, the bullet, instead of piercing the heart, ricocheted off the rib.

Van Gogh lost consciousness and fell to the ground. When evening came, he came to his senses and began to look for a revolver to finish the job, but he couldn’t find it and trudged back to the hotel, where a doctor was called for him.

The incident was reported to Van Gogh's brother, Theo, who arrived the next day. For some time, Theo thought that Vincent would survive - but nothing could be done. That same night, at the age of 37, the artist died.

“I didn’t leave his bedside until it was all over,” Theo wrote to his wife Johanna. “As he died, he said: “That’s how I wanted to go!”, After which he lived for a few more minutes, and then it was all over, and he found peace that he could not find on earth."