Doubts over Vincent van Gogh suicide in new biography

According to a 2011 biography, Van Gogh: The Life, Vincent van Gogh did not kill himself.

Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith claim that, contrary to popular belief, it was more likely Vincent van Gogh was shot accidentally by two boys he knew who had “a malfunctioning gun”.

The authors came to their conclusion after 10 years of study with more than 20 translators and researchers.

The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam called the claim “dramatic” and “intriguing”.

In a statement, however, curator Leo Jansen said “plenty of questions remain unanswered” and that it would be “premature to rule out suicide”.

He added that the new claims would “generate a great deal of discussion”.

Vincent van Gogh died in Auvers-sur-Oise, France, in 1890 aged 37.

The Dutch master had been staying at the Auberge Ravoux inn from where he would walk to local wheat fields to paint.

It has long been thought that he shot himself in a wheat field before returning to the inn where he later died.

Steven Naifeh said it was “very clear to us that he did not go into the wheat fields with the intention of shooting himself”.

“The accepted understanding of what happened in Auvers among the people who knew him was that he was killed accidentally by a couple of boys and he decided to protect them by accepting the blame.”

He said that renowned art historian John Rewald had recorded that version of events when he visited Auvers in the 1930s and other details were found that corroborated the theory.

They include the assertion that the bullet entered Van Gogh’s upper abdomen from an oblique angle – not straight on as might be expected from a suicide.

“These two boys, one of whom was wearing a cowboy outfit and had a malfunctioning gun that he played cowboy with, were known to go drinking at that hour of day with Vincent.

“So you have a couple of teenagers who have a malfunctioning gun, you have a boy who likes to play cowboy, you have three people probably all of whom had too much to drink.”

He said “accidental homicide” was “far more likely”.

“It’s really hard to imagine that if either of these two boys was the one holding the gun – which is probably more likely than not – it’s very hard to imagine that they really intended to kill this painter.”

Gregory White Smith, meanwhile, said Vincent van Gogh did not “actively seek death but that when it came to him, or when it presented itself as a possibility, he embraced it”.

He said Van Gogh’s acceptance of death was “really done as an act of love to his brother, to whom he was a burden”.

Van Gogh’s brother, Theo, was funding the artist who, at that time, “wasn’t selling”.

Other revelations claimed by the authors include that:

• Van Gogh’s family tried to commit him to a mental asylum long before his voluntary confinement later
• Van Gogh fought so furiously with his parson father that some of his family accused the artist of killing him
• Van Gogh’s affliction, viewed as a mix of mania and depression, was a result of a form of epilepsy

Gregory White Smith said the biography, published on November 10, helped to give a greater understanding of a “frail and flawed figure” and that his art would be seen “as even more of an achievement”.

Thousands of previously untranslated letters written by the artist were among documents studied by the authors to create a research database containing 28,000 notes.