Vincent Van Gogh

Van Gogh's decision to commit suicide remains a complex conundrum and many attempts have been made--by artists as well as writers and psychiatrists--to unravel the causes of that final tragic act. We shall never know exactly why he decided to shoot himself that Sunday, July 27, in the wheat fields behind the Château of Auvers. Tellingly, in his last letter to his mother and Wil he reported "a mood of almost too much serenity"--a chilling note before the calamity.

In Auvers, too, the tranquility he desperately longed for had proved as ephemeral and ultimately elusive as ever. The pervasive melancholy that he had recognized in himself in his early years in Holland and that he had struggled to hold at bay had finally manifested itself in his illness in the Midi. It has been suggested that Van Gogh was extremely sensitive to images of sorrow, whether in the Bible, contemporary literature, or life and nature. His deep communion with nature bordered on Romantic mysticism and included not only euphoric feelings of the regenerative powers of nature, symbolized for him by the sun and the seasons, the blossoming trees and the wheat fields, but also a visceral sense of the other face of regeneration: death and timelessness expressed in the cypresses, olive trees, and the night sky with its stars. The shadow of death had arisen in his mind in 1873, and can be traced in his mourning for the love and family life he lacked in his own life, and in his longing for an ideal purity. His obsessive personality dictated his approach to everything, from his early devotion to the Bible, to his passion for literature, his excessive behaviors as well as his attempts to control those behaviors and, above all, his unabated dedication to art. When, at the age of twenty-seven, he finally decided to become an artist, Van Gogh believed he had found a remedy for his melancholia. A theme that recurred in his letters was the efficacy of work as a "distraction" from his sadness, a note that became ever more urgent during his periods of illness in Arles and in Saint-Rémy.

Several strands of Van Gogh's life had come together in Auvers. He knew that he could not live a healthy life in Paris, or, indeed, in any large city, because his nerves were constantly overstimulated, not least by the abuse of alcohol and tobacco that he felt had undermined his health in Paris. In the countryside, however, he lacked the artistic fellowship and exchanges upon which he thrived. Van Gogh had suffered greatly from Gauguin's flight from Arles and the consequent failure of his dream of an artistic community. His sense of isolation was compounded by his confinement in a religious environment in Saint-Rémy and an apparent aggravation of his illness--one possible reason for his suicide attempts at Saint-Paul-de-Mausole. Though he had had no attacks since arriving in Auvers, the fear must have haunted him. In Auvers, too, he was alone again, despite the goodwill--even affection, as Emile Bernard would later report--of people around him. Van Gogh was now within easy reach of Paris, yet Paris may have aroused acute feelings that were hard to bear: love for Theo, Johanna, and little Vincent, mixed perhaps with despair at seeing close up a vision of life that Vincent believed he could never have. Finally, there was Theo's professional situation. Now that he was married, his income was inadequate to his needs; in early July, as Vincent was about to return to Auvers from Paris, Theo confided his anxiety, and the fact that he would not be able to support Vincent as regularly as before. As concerned as Vincent was for Theo and Theo's family, he was worried for himself as well: in a subsequent letter to Theo, Vincent described himself as "stunned" and uncertain about his financial future. The one reliable element in his world was his art, but the personal cost was high. The last sentence in his unfinished letter read: "Well, my own work, I am risking my life for it and my reason has half foundered because of it."

The heartrending particulars of the artist's last hours are revealed by contemporary testimonies from Dr. Gachet and Adeline Ravoux, the innkeeper's daughter, and from Theo's letters to Johanna. On July 27, after shooting himself, Van Gogh returned to Ravoux's inn. Emile Bernard has left us a detailed account of the event, which he sent to Aurier:

I imagine that you have already guessed that he killed himself. . . . On Sunday evening he went into the Auvers countryside, left his easel against a haystack and went behind the Château and shot himself with a revolver. From the violence of the impact (the bullet passed under the heart) he fell, but he got up and fell again three times and then returned to the inn where he lived (Ravoux, place de la Mairie) without saying anything to anyone about his injury. Finally, Monday evening he expired, smoking [the] pipe he had not wanted to put down, and explaining that his suicide was absolutely calculated and lucid. Characteristically enough, I was told that he frankly stated his desire to die--"Then it has to be done over again"--when Dr. Gachet told him that he still hoped to save him; but, alas, it was no longer possible.

Dr. Gachet summoned Theo, who arrived in Auvers the next day. Distraught, he raced into the inn to embrace his dying brother; they spoke together affectionately. Theo reported his vigil to Johanna: "I found him somewhat better than I expected. I will not write the details, they are too sad. . . . He was happy to see me, and I stay with him constantly. . . . Poor fellow, such brief happiness fell to him, and now he holds no illusions. The burden grows too great at times; he feels so alone." At 1:30 a.m. on Tuesday, July 29, 1890, Vincent van Gogh died. His brother recalled one of the last things Vincent said: "I wish I could pass away like this." Theo concluded that shortly thereafter all was over, and that finally Vincent would find the rest denied to him while he was alive. Theo had funeral invitations printed and attempted to arrange for a mass to be held the next day in the church in Auvers. However, because Vincent's death was a suicide, the church refused, and Theo was forced to cancel the service.

Around ten o'clock on Wednesday morning, Emile Bernard, the old art dealer and artists' friend Julien "Père" Tanguy, and other artists, including Lucien Pissarro, came from Paris and joined Dr. Gachet and Theo. Bernard reported to Aurier that people from the area, who knew him only briefly, loved him, as he was "so good, so human." The closed wooden coffin was placed in a spare room on the ground floor of Ravoux's inn--"the artist's room," where Van Gogh had painted. The simple coffin was draped with white cotton bedecked with masses of flowers, especially the sunflowers that the artist had so loved. In front of the casket on the floor were the artist's emblems: his easel, folding stool, and brushes. Bernard recalled that the "halo" of Van Gogh's paintings tacked against the walls of his room created an aura of his genius. Such a sensation made the loss of Van Gogh even more profound to his fellow artists.

At three o'clock, under a fierce sun, the funeral cortege followed the hearse up the hill, "talking," as Bernard recalled, "about the bold thrust he gave to art, the great projects that he was always planning." Bernard continued, "We arrived at the cemetery, a small, new graveyard. . . . It is on the knoll overlooking the crops, under that great blue sky that he would have loved still. . . . Then he was lowered into the grave. . . . That day was too much made for him for us not to imagine that he could still have lived happily."

Dr. Gachet attempted to give the eulogy, but wept so copiously that his words came out as a confused adieu. Bernard summed up the physician's final words: "He was, he said, an honest man and a great artist. He had only two goals: humanity and art. It is the art that he cherished above all else that will ensure that he lives on."