Martin Bailey, a Van Gogh specialist, stated that he traced the path of the Vincent’s bed. It is the same bed that Van Gogh painted in his three versions of "The Bedroom" in 1888 and 1889.
The bed on the paintings was one of the two double beds to furnish a flat rented in Arles, South France, by Vincent van Gogh in September 1888. The same one was ordered also for a guest. It was Paul Gauguin who came to stay with Vincent and slept in it a month later.
Only idealists can imagine a highly productive collaboration of the two great artists working shoulder by shoulder in a small Vincent’s room. In reality they ended up with a harsh quarrel 2 months later. Gauguin left the flat threatening to leave for Paris, and van Gogh cut his ear the same night.
So, there was a really messy Christmas Eve. As Theo’s wife Jo Gogh-Bonger noted, when translating letters of Vincent van Gogh, he, "in a state of terrible excitement and in a high fever, had cut off a piece of his own ear and taken it as a present to a woman in a brothel. There had been a violent scene; Roulin the postman managed to get him home, but the police intervened, found Vincent bleeding and unconscious in bed, and sent him to the hospital. Theo found him there, "poor fighter and poor, poor sufferer," and stayed over Christmas. Gauguin went back with Theo to Paris."
There are so many theories and gossips around the most famous act of self-mutilation in the history of art, that each can choose the one fitting to his/her mindset.
No one can say for sure why Vincent has cut his ear and how he has done it. Some say that it’s absinthe that drove him to this crazy injury. The opponents refute that Gauguin consumed at least as much absinthe as van Gogh, but he did not exhibit the same behavior.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Portrait of Vincent van Gogh with a glass of absinthe, 1887
Some doctors said that van Gogh was attacked by the symptoms of neurosyphilis, others — by the consequences of gonorrheal infection, which Vincent had in The Hague at the age of 29. Wilfred Niels Arnol, professor in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at University of Kansas Medical Center, refutes these theories and put forward his own. In his "The Illness of Vincent van Gogh" he states that the great artist "had an inherited metabolic disease, acute intermittent porphyria, that accounts for all of the signs and symptoms of his underlying illness".
Nonetheless, writer Martin Bailey chooses motivation for ear-cutting between "love, jealousy, and rage." He claims that the passionate row with Paul Gauguin might not be the exact motive for it. The real reason was in his deep distress by the news of Theo’s coming marriage. Vincent might have gotten a letter from his brother just on the 23rd of December and therefore began to go mad at Theo’s wedding. He was worrying that it would seize their close relationship, after all his brother was the only funder for his living.
Nonetheless, writer Martin Bailey chooses motivation for ear-cutting between "love, jealousy, and rage." He claims that the passionate row with Paul Gauguin might not be the exact motive for it. The real reason was in his deep distress by the news of Theo’s coming marriage. Vincent might have gotten a letter from his brother just on the 23rd of December and therefore began to go mad at Theo’s wedding. He was worrying that it would seize their close relationship, after all his brother was the only funder for his living.
We never know for sure whether he received the letter before or after the defacement. Nor can we learn if he cut all of his ear off.
An Amsterdam exhibition On the Verge of Insanity focused on Vincent van Gogh’s medical problems in July 15 — 25 September 2016. It presented new facts about the ear, too. The writer Bernadette Murphy discovered a note and a diagram from Dr. Félix Rey, who had treated Van Gogh in Arles after the ear mutilation.
Rey’s diagram shows that nearly the entire ear was cut off. One of the statements on the paper says: "what remained of the lobe".
There was another document in the exhibition that tells a slightly different story. Gustave Coquiot, a Van Gogh specialist, wrote after meeting the same Dr. Rey on 4 May 1922, that only the tragus remained.
What do clear the obscure picture of the mad night on December 23rd, 1888, are the facts Murphy found telling who was the young woman at the brothel to whom van Gogh presented his ear. Now we know for sure that her name was Gabrielle (Gabi) Berlatier and she was not a prostitute, but a daughter of a farmer that worked as a maid in the brothel.
Murphy supposes that Vincent may have met her in Paris. She was beaten by a rabid dog in Provence and treated at the Institut Pasteur in Paris. Or, as the Art Newspaper suggests, Gabrielle at a certain time may have worked as a cleaner at the Café de la Gare. Vincent rented a room and stayed there from May to September 1888, before he began to live at the Yellow House, that is also nearby.
Anyway, given her his ear, he might have shown an act of self-sacrifice and compassion. In such a strange way he has chosen this girl to give a piece of himself.
Murphy supposes that Vincent may have met her in Paris. She was beaten by a rabid dog in Provence and treated at the Institut Pasteur in Paris. Or, as the Art Newspaper suggests, Gabrielle at a certain time may have worked as a cleaner at the Café de la Gare. Vincent rented a room and stayed there from May to September 1888, before he began to live at the Yellow House, that is also nearby.
Anyway, given her his ear, he might have shown an act of self-sacrifice and compassion. In such a strange way he has chosen this girl to give a piece of himself.
The medical record of Gabrielle Berlatier for rabies treatment at the Institut Pasteur, Paris. Image courtesy Institut Pasteur (Musée)
As to the double bed in Vincent’s room, it was washed from the blood and put at order by the charwoman and van Gogh’s friend Roulin while the artist was at the hospital in January 1889. Van Gogh spent only several nights on it in 1889 as he was confined at the hospital in Arles, and then retreated to the asylum in Saint-Rémy in May 1889. Only in 1890 he sent the bed and other furniture by train to Auvers-sur-Oise, north of Paris, where he worked for the last weeks of his life.
Wheatfield with Crows, 1890, Vincent van Gogh, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
On 27 July 1890 Vincent van Gogh went to the wheat fields above the village and shot himself. As the bullet did not go through his heart but ricocheted off his ribs, the death has not come at once. He died of his wound two days later in his bed.
Martin Bailey traced further journey of van Gogh’s bed to Theo, then to his wife Jo to Holland, who used it in her small guesthouse. When she died, it passed to her son Vincent, who lived in Laren, east of Amsterdam. He kept it in the family cellar up until September 1945, when the furniture for the victims of the Second World War was gathered. Vincent the junior donated the bed for people in Boxmeer, a small town 40 km south of Arnhem.
Helped by a historian, Martin Bailey even found the photograph where the truck filled with donated furniture is about to leave from Laren to Boxmeer in September 1945.
Helped by a historian, Martin Bailey even found the photograph where the truck filled with donated furniture is about to leave from Laren to Boxmeer in September 1945.
In 1945 Van Gogh’s bed formed part of a donation to a Netherlands community (© Courtesy of NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Netherlands)
The rest of the bed’s story is questionable. It could have been thrown away, destroyed by time, or it may still stand in some house or attic in Boxmeer. Well, if it still exists, guess it’s time for it to show up at some auction. We’ll see.
Written by N. Korchina
On materials from The Art Newspaper, The Guardian, Artdaily
On materials from The Art Newspaper, The Guardian, Artdaily
