25: Vincent van Gogh • At Eternity’s Gate / The Tragedy (Madness, Genius, & Tragedy: Part 4)

Opening:

L’FREAQ’s Vincent Theme, singing sweetly…

Gun cocks… and shoots. The gun shot reverberates across the empty field. (Immediately stopping the music in its tracks.)

[A silence…]

Vincent van Gogh is shot on July 27th, 1890.

[foreboding ambience]

The next morning, July 28th, Theo van Gogh is opening up shop at his Paris art gallery. [Sound of a pendulum grandfather clock]

[door with bell]

An unexpected man barges in.

He scans the open space and hastily approaches. He says “Theo van Gogh?”

Theo nods with an alarmed gaze. He recognizes him as the Dutch painter, Anton Hirschig, whom he personally sent to accompany Vincent in Auvers, a small town on the northwestern outskirts of Paris, only a month ago. The man extends an envelope to him and says:

“It is from Dr. Gachet — it is about Vincent…”

For a moment… time freezes. The pendulum hovers still — in the liminal space between instances. For a moment… Theo notices the ivory envelope stretched out in front of him. His name penned in black script. He catches the aroma of tobacco from the artist’s sleeve, and notices the stubble on his face, indicating he likely skipped his morning routine to catch the express train to Paris. The urgency of the moment buzzes like deja vu in his skull.

This is no ordinary letter, he feels it in his bones. It is an invitation, and once opened, the events which follow cannot be undone. The words cannot be unread.

You cannot uncross a threshold into an abyss.

He notices the grace of the slanted morning sunlight as it breaks through the storefront windows. He recalls how Vincent’s first obsession was to capture sunlight in his paintings.

The pendulum arcs left — as the tide rushes back in.

Theo grabs it.

[A letter envelope opening, letter being taken out…]

“Dear Theo,

Vincent has wounded himself. The situation is urgent. I would not presume to tell you what to do, but I believe that it is your duty to come, in case of any complications that might occur.

Sincerely,
Dr. Gachet”

Theo’s free hand reflexively covers his mouth — in shock… [clothes and shoe scuff] His body jolts into action, as he grabs his hat and rushes for the door. [running steps, door open with bell]

[music: reprise of Vincent’s running madness / ear incident music…]

He boards the first train out of Paris, heading to the small town of Auvers. His hand has not let go of the note.

Staring out of the window, all he sees are echoes of the past. The familiarity of this scenario does not escape him. It was only a year and 7 months ago when he was rushing to Arles, on a southbound train, on Christmas morning, after receiving the alarming telegram that Vincent had also wounded himself.

That day he arrived at the hospital to discover his brother with a blood soaked bandage wrapped around his head and missing an ear.

What fresh hell awaits him now?

Surely it can’t be worse than that. He is alive after all…

[train blows whistle]

When Theo finally arrives in Auvers, he heads straight for the place where Vincent is staying: the Ravoux Inn. He is in room number 5, up a circular wooden staircase, [steps creaking] in a small attic room, lit by a single skylight. [door opens] Theo finds him reclining on his bed with a pipe in his hand.

Vincent is very happy to see him, although he initially protested and pleaded with Dr. Gachet not to contact Theo.

Vincent has a gunshot wound just below his ribs. The doctors describe it as “about the size of a large pea,” the bleeding is minimal, and the pain seems to seize him up in waves, then subside again. Two doctors have attended to Vincent, Dr. Gachet, who is a local doctor and recent friend of the Van Gogh brothers, and Dr. Mazery, a doctor on summer holiday in the town of Auvers. Neither of them is qualified for dealing with bullet wounds or surgeries requiring the removal of bullets.

Dr. Gachet is an expert on nutrition and often gives counsel and advice to local neurotic artist types. While Dr. Mazery is an obstetrician, much more capable of helping if Vincent was about to give birth to a baby than in this current predicament, the best he can provide is general care. The only reason he is called to the scene is because he happens to be in Auvers on summer holiday. There are no nearby hospitals for many miles.

Dr. Mazery examines Vincent, and concludes that due to the minimal bleeding, the bullet missed all major organs and blood vessels. He probed Vincent’s body, no doubt a painful process, and believed he located the bullet toward the back of his abdominal cavity. Leaving the possibility that it may have punctured a lung, grazed an artery, or lodged near the spinal cord… all potentially mortal threats.

One witness recalled Vincent demanding that someone cut his stomach open to remove the bullet.

The doctors determine that since he does not have any symptoms of fever or excessive bleeding, it would be risky to attempt a train ride to bring him to a Paris hospital. So for the time being, Dr. Mazery dresses the wound, to prevent infection and aid in healing. And they will visit him frequently to monitor his condition.

But how did Vincent get shot? The implication, right from the first note Theo receives from Dr. Gachet is that it was self inflicted. Dr. Gachet had written ‘Vincent has wounded himself.’

The innkeeper’s daughter, Adeline Ravoux, later recalled in an interview that when Vincent staggered into the Inn that night, clenching his side, that her father asked him “What have you done?” and Vincent replied “I tried to kill myself.”

And according to Adeline, her father was present for the conversation Vincent had with the police, who came to investigate the reports of a shooting. When questioned by them, Vincent responded: “What I have done is nobody else’s business. I am free to do what I like with my own body.”

But where was the gun? And whose gun was it? Vincent hated firearms, and was never seen using one… More on that later.

On July 28th, the same day that Theo spends by Vincent’s bedside, he pens his fiance, Johanna, a letter, describing what has happened. He writes:

[cue music]

“Dearest Jo,

This morning a Dutch painter who is also in Auvers brought a letter from Dr Gachet conveying bad news about Vincent and asking me to go there. I dropped everything and went immediately and found him better than I had expected, although he is indeed very ill. I shan’t go into detail, it’s all too distressing, but I should warn you, dearest, that his life could be in danger.

What should we think and what should we hope for him? He was pleased I had come and we’re together almost constantly. If he’s better tonight, I’ll go back to Paris tomorrow morning, but if not, I shall stay on here. Poor fellow, he wasn’t granted a lavish share of happiness and he no longer harbors any illusions. He was lonely, and sometimes it was more than he could bear. Don’t be too sad, my love, you know I tend to paint things blacker than they are. Perhaps he’ll recover yet and see better times …

Dearest, if anything should happen to Vincent it would be better for you to be in Holland and I shall be strong. Is it not strange that I was so nervous and uneasy all of last week, as if I had a premonition that something would happen.
He talks to me so pleasantly and kept asking after you and the little one and said you had no inkling of all life’s sadness. If only we could give him more faith in life.”

[end music]

Theo remained with Vincent the entire day, but something was shifting in his condition. The bullet likely caused an infection and punctured his lung. Vincent’s condition was not improving, it seemed to be the writing was on the wall… yet he was not afraid… instead, he seemed to welcome it.

The book Van Gogh: The Life, describes the scene:

“As the sun set and the attic began to cool, both conversation and rest became more elusive. Vincent’s breathing grew shallower and faster. His heart raced. Color and warmth drained from his skin. He had spells in which he seemed almost to be “suffocating,” Theo recalled. By nightfall, the end seemed near. The spells came more often. They talked less.

With each panic of breathing, with each fond remembrance and each flush of tears, the subject of death hovered closer. The brothers had said little about suicide over the years—except to disavow it—but death had obsessed Vincent’s letters from the beginning. The thought of death “warmed me and made my heart glow,” he wrote from England in 1876. He lingered in graveyards and longed to draw corpses. He cherished images of funerals and plagues and portrayals of Death. He saw serenity in the faces of the dead and envied their freedom from “the burden of life, which we have to go on bearing.”… “Dying is hard,” he had scolded a mourner at his father’s funeral, “but living is harder still.”

The years of failure, penury, guilt, loneliness, and finally madness had shown him a different face of death. Deprived of the comfort of religion by his father’s death in 1885, he had failed ever since to fill the void it left. He tested everything from Tolstoy’s nihilism to Voltaire’s cosmic laugh, and found them all wanting. In the end, only art consoled. “My aim in life is to make pictures and drawings, as many and as well as I can,” he wrote; “then, at the end of my life, I hope to pass away, looking back with love and tender regret, and thinking, ‘Oh, the pictures I might have made!’”

Vincent’s fixation on death throughout his life also meant that he often reflected on ‘life after death’, in multiple ways.

He always had his eyes set on the future, he once wrote: “Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.”

And even a future in which his works might outlive him, he understood that the value of an artist’s work can change over time, becoming more relevant for another era, beyond the artist’s lifetime. He wrote: “I can’t change the fact that my paintings don’t sell. But the time will come — when people will recognize that they are worth more than the value of the paints used in the picture.”

And Vincent reflected on the prospect of the afterlife in the most transcendent and poetic way, in a letter to Theo from 1888, written while he was in The Yellow House, he writes:

“I feel more and more that we must not judge of God from this world. It’s just a study that didn’t come off. What can you do with a study that has gone wrong? —If you are fond of the artist, you do not find much to criticize—you hold your tongue.

But you have the right to ask for something better. We should have to see other works by the same hand though; this world was evidently slapped together in a hurry on one of his bad days, when the artist didn’t know what he was doing or didn’t have his wits about him. All the same, according to what the legend says, this good old God took a terrible lot of trouble over this world-study of his…

I am inclined to think that the legend is right, but then the study is ruined in so many ways. It is only a master who can make such a blunder, and perhaps that is the best consolation we can have out of it, since in that case we have a right to hope that we’ll see the same creative hand get even with itself. And this life of ours, so much criticized, and for good and even exalted reasons, we must not take it for anything but what it is, and go on hoping that in some other life we’ll see something — better than this.”

Just after midnight, in the candlelit attic room, Theo sits next to Vincent’s bed, holding his hand — the light of the moon glowing through the skylight above them.

Vincent lays on his back, with one arm resting on the floor… he stares up at the night sky and says “I want to die like this.” He lays there for another half hour, in Theo’s steady embrace, and draws his last breath…

The struggle is over. His restless heart is finally at peace.

In the days that followed, Theo was in the deepest grief. But he shouldered the responsibility to give Vincent the dignity in death which he did not have in life. He arranged all the details of the funeral, from the location, the time, and even a burial place. He also wrote letters and sent telegrams to inform family and friends of the tragic news. And tried his best to arrange a proper ceremony, fit for one of the world’s greatest artists.

The tragic news was received with a strange mixture of sadness and sometimes relief. Relief that somehow Vincent was better off this way… a sentiment expressed most often by family members, who knew of Vincent’s difficult life, but who lived far enough away and removed from Vincent, that they only knew him as the black sheep of the family. It was better that he is no longer suffering they’d say… with the subtext that it is also better for the family name. More convenient that he is gone. But even when this sentiment came from the closest family members, Theo took it as the deepest insult. It truly showed that even in the end, no one understood Vincent…except Theo.

In response to his sister, Lies, he wrote:

“…To say we must be grateful that he rests — I still hesitate to do so. Maybe I should call it one of the great cruelties of life on this earth… and maybe we should count him among the martyrs who died with a smile on their face.

He did not wish to stay alive and his mind was so calm because he had always fought for his convictions, convictions that he had measured against the best and noblest of his predecessors…”

In a letter to their mother, from August 1st, Theo writes this passage:

“It is a sadness which will weigh upon me for a long time and will certainly not leave my thoughts as long as I live, but if one should want to say anything it is that he himself has found the rest he so much longed for. If he could have seen how people behaved to me when he had left us and could have seen the kindness which so many showed for him, he would for the moment, not have decided that he wanted to die.”

In a letter to his fiance, Johanna, from a day after the funeral, Theo writes:

“My dearest Jo,

Fortunately, he was still alive when I reached Auvers and I didn’t leave his side until it was all over. I can’t write about it all, but I shall be with you soon and I’ll tell you everything. One of his last words was: ‘this is how I wanted to go’ and it took a few moments and then it was over and he found the peace he hadn’t been able to find on earth.

The two doctors were marvelous. Dr Gachet had summoned the village doctor because he didn’t trust himself, but nevertheless it was he who did everything. Afterwards he scarcely left me alone for a moment and was extremely kind. Everyone was splendid.

The following morning 8 friends arrived from Paris and elsewhere, and in the room where the coffin had been placed they hung his paintings, which looked so very beautiful. There were masses of bouquets and wreaths. Dr Gachet arrived first with a magnificent bunch of sunflowers, because Vincent loved them so much.

There are lots of artists living in Auvers and many of them came. Your brother, Dries, came too. There was much to be done to have the funeral take place on time, but it was all arranged, and waiting the last hour was hard.

He is buried in a sunny spot among the wheat fields, and the churchyard hasn’t the unpleasantness of Parisian churchyards. Dr Gachet spoke beautifully; I said a few words of thanks and then it was over. I managed to leave in the evening, but — oh how empty it is everywhere. I miss him so much; everything seems to remind me of him.”

In the coming days… the weight of this tragedy and grief will only reinforce Theo’s conviction and moral duty, with a new purpose… to be a champion of Vincent’s work… that he should not have toiled in vain. That his 900 paintings become carriers of the living soul of Vincent.

In a letter to their sister, Lies, from August 5th, Theo writes this passage:

“In the last letter which he wrote me and which dates from some four days before his death, it says, “I try to do as well as certain painters whom I have greatly loved and admired.”

People should realize that he was a great artist, something which often coincides with being a great human being. In the course of time this will surely be acknowledged, and many will regret his early death…”

[music cue extended]

Chapter Six: The Gunshot

We are not done with Vincent’s death. As much as it would be more convenient to move on… we have to come to terms with the fact that his death is one of the reasons he is famous. His tragedy is one of the reasons his story keeps being retold generation after generation.

If he had lived for another ten or twenty years, I have no doubt that he would be an equally important figure in art history. But without the tragedy… Does his story make it into popular culture?

Without the mental health crises and the apparent suicide… Would there be countless films, documentaries, tv shows, novels, biographies, and theatre productions?

And so… it is our responsibility as Vincent enthusiasts to know what really happened. To understand the tragedy through the humans involved, because in spending this time with them, we have grown to care for them, and perhaps even love them.

And there is some solace in finally knowing what really happened.

For over a century, it has been accepted in popular culture that Vincent van Gogh committed suicide by shooting himself in the stomach. This is what the old art history text books say, and this is also what the biography I read about Vincent as a teenager said… But what if that story is wrong?

In the last two decades, an alternate theory has prominently emerged, based on some compelling evidence… a theory which has gained enough support that recent biographers and filmmakers have adopted it as their interpretation of what happened.

In that interpretation, we effectively see a parallel dimension, where Vincent is not the ‘troubled artist type’ who commits suicide by his own hand, but the ‘romantic artist type’ who is murdered by someone else.

On what grounds can someone make such a bold claim?

To rewrite a suicide as a homicide. What evidence is there to support it? And if all the evidence for both scenarios is presented before you… ladies and gentlemen of the jury… [breathe in] Which do you choose?

[gavel three times]

Let’s find out. (Get your detective hats back on. We have a good old fashioned murder mystery on our hands, one which is fit for the likes of Sherlock Holmes himself. Although I suspect he might even have a bit of trouble with this one.)

In this chapter, I will present you with all the relevant evidence for both equally tragic scenarios: suicide… or homicide… so you can make up your mind. And afterward, I will share with you what I think happened.

First — ‘The timeline of events’…

In July 1890, Vincent is in the small town of Auvers, where he has been staying for two months, since leaving the asylum. Before heading to Auvers, he visited Theo, Johanna, and their newborn son, little Vincent. He even held him in his arms.

But as in the past, the urban anxieties of Paris were too much for him, he instead opted for the artist friendly town of Auvers, Northwest of Paris.

And so, he has taken up lodging in the Ravoux Inn, a family owned establishment with an artist’s cafe on the first floor, and a boarding house on the second.

He is on good terms with everyone, including the owner, Gustave Ravoux, and the other local artists in the town.

On the morning of Sunday, July 27th, Vincent is out painting in the fields. Somewhere around the afternoon, he returns to the Ravoux Inn for his midday meal. Vincent has been keeping a predictable schedule of work and rest, enough so that the restaurant staff at the Ravoux Inn know when to expect Vincent to stop in for his meals.

After his midday meal, he arranges his painting supplies for an extended walk into the countryside. Perhaps to scout a new location for a landscape and capture the setting sun on his canvas. He slings his bag of paints and brushes over his arm, and his easel and a canvas over his shoulder.

No one clearly recalls the exact direction he goes. Such details are often missing in witness reports, things which are so commonplace that we fail to notice them.

Hours pass. The sun has set. The Ravouxs and their guests are enjoying a summer evening dinner on the cafe terrace. Someone notices Vincent staggering back, emerging from the dark street… without his bag, his canvas, or his easel.

One of the witnesses recalled “He was holding his belly and seemed to be limping… His jacket was buttoned up.” An odd detail on such a hot summer day. He passes them without saying a word, and heads straight to his room.

The book, Van Gogh: The Life mentions this:

“Gustave Ravoux, concerned about his guest’s strange behavior, listened from the bottom of the stairs. When he heard moaning, he climbed to Vincent’s attic room. He found Vincent lying on his bed, curled up in pain. He asked what was wrong.

“Je me suis blesse,” Vincent replied “I wounded myself.” as he lifted his shirt and showed Ravoux the small hole under his ribs.”

This is all that is ‘officially’ known. The news travels through the small town fast. Yet when the police arrive to investigate, no witnesses come forward about the shooting, no one admits to letting Vincent borrow a gun, and no one comes forward to claim they are missing a gun.

In addition, no one claims to find Vincent’s supplies or the gun he apparently used.

It is frustrating to have so little evidence. Especially because the evidence we do have just doesn’t add up. As we shall see.

Both scenarios, the suicide and the homicide agree on all of these stated details, regarding Vincent’s departure and return. Where they differ is anecdotal evidence, interpretation, and conjecture.

[typewriter]
Scenario 1: Suicide

Here is a list of evidence I have put together which points toward suicide:

1. According to Gustave Ravoux, the owner of the Inn, and the first person Vincent spoke to after the incident, Vincent said “Je me suis blesse,” French for “I wounded myself.”

2. In the urgent letter that Dr. Gachet writes to Theo to summon him to Auvers, he mentions “Vincent has wounded himself.”

3. Vincent desperately tries to convince Dr. Gachet not to contact Theo… possibly a sign that he is embarrassed about the botched suicide, and does not want to have to explain himself to Theo.

4. The strange location of the wound may be because of Vincent’s inexperience with guns. There is not a single account of him owning a gun his entire life. Perhaps he was aiming for his heart, but the awkward distance caused him to fumble the gun’s angle to shoot near his stomach.

5. One of Vincent’s friends, Emile Bernard, who was also an artist, kept a correspondence with Vincent, and he attended his funeral. He spoke with both Dr. Gachet and Theo at that funeral. Emile Bernard later wrote that when Vincent was on his bed, Dr. Gachet informed him he intended to save his life from this wound, but that Vincent replied “then I’ll have to do it over again.”

6. The local church, in Auvers, where Theo had initially scheduled Vincent’s funeral denied to give him proper ceremony, without clarifying their reasoning. It is assumed they denied a traditional ceremony to Vincent because it was already rumored he took his own life.

7. Vincent was facing an uncertain future. Theo was now a husband and a father, but he was also less stable financially due to difficulties at his job, and serious considerations to leave his current art dealership firm. And to make matters worse, he was also sick with syphilis, and their child’s health seemed to also be wavering. Given all of that, it was uncertain if he would be able to support Vincent a few months later. The reality of this scenario may have made Vincent feel like a burden. In the last two letters there seems to be a tension between them, like something is unsettled, and it is not yet clear what the future will hold. This kind of instability and emotional turmoil may have exacerbated Vincent’s undiagnosed mental illness, as we know it had in the past. Pair that with alcohol consumption and smoking, and it starts to look more and more like the circumstances that caused the ‘ear incident.’

8. A gun was found… Not at the time. Not in the days that followed. But 70 years later. Yes, a farmer in 1960 found a corroded revolver in one of the fields that it is theorized Vincent shot himself. You can view some pictures of this revolver as well as other important artwork related to this episode on my site: mjdorian.com/vincent, or follow the link in the show notes, once there, just click on the Companion Gallery associated with this episode. The revolver was discovered on the surface of the soil, and not buried, implying that whoever used it, dropped the gun, or abandoned it. The decades of rain have left it looking like a solid piece of rust in the shape of a revolver. Again, go check out a picture of it on mjdorian.com/vincent the is link in the episode notes.

That completes my list of 8 clues that imply suicide as the cause of death. And now to explore the other side… The side taken up by recent films and biographies.

Scenario 2: Homicide

In the town of Auvers, there were two young men, the Secretan brothers, who tormented Vincent for their personal amusement. They would put salt in his coffee, taunt him while he tried to focus on painting, once they put a snake in his paint box, and even rubbed hot pepper on the tips of his brushes, because they knew that when he painted he would often put the ends of his paintbrushes in his mouth while deep in thought. Ok… the last one is pretty funny.

But overall, the Secretan brothers were assholes. The book Van Gogh: The Life, describes them for us:

“The leader of the summer boys was Rene Secretan, the sixteen-year old son of a rich pharmacist from Paris. The Secretions had a holiday house in the area and arrived every June at the start of the fishing season.

An avid outdoorsman who would readily skip class at his prestigious lycée for a chance to go hunting or fishing, and who admired paintings only if they depicted naked women. Rene Secretan might never have crossed Vincent van Gogh’s path if it had not been for his older brother Gaston, an aspiring artist. Nineteen-year-old Gaston—the sensitive, poetic polar opposite of his brother—found Vincent’s stories of the new art and the Paris art world engaging in a way unfathomable to Rene, who kept expecting the authorities to haul Vincent away any day “because of his hare-brained ideas and the way he lived.”

In his loneliness, Vincent accepted the abuse of the younger brother as the price of the older’s companionship. He nicknamed Rene “Buffalo Bill,” both for his strutting cowboy bravado and for the costume he had bought at Bill Cody’s “Wild West Show” at the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris, complete with boots, fringed coat, and cowboy hat. But Vincent mispronounced the name—he called him “Puffalo Pill”—a mistake that only incited Rene to more aggressive taunts and greater extremes of ridicule.

For an extra touch of authenticity and menace, he added a revolver to his ensemble, an antiquated .380-caliber “pea-shooter” that “went off when it felt like it,” Rene recalled.”

Now, these details are not from letters Vincent sent. The only reason we have these details is from an interview published in 1957 by the author and French physician, Victor Doiteau. Doiteau interviewed Rene Secretan himself, at the age of 82, and published the interview in the art journal the Aesculape.

I have found evidence that the journal and interview exists in library records, but this thing is close to impossible to get ahold of. One of those documents scholars make trips to view in person. On top of that: it is written in French and I have not found any English translations of it anywhere. If you’re curious, the article is called “Deux ‘copains’ de Van Gogh, inconnus, les frères Gaston et René Secrétan, Vincent, tel qu’ils l’ont vu” by Victor Doiteau. It roughly translates as “Two unknown pals of Van Gogh, The brothers Gaston and Rene Secretan, Vincent as they saw him.”

So, it is from this interview that the authors of Van Gogh: The Life get all of their information about the Secretan brothers. Is an 82 year old Rene Secretan a reliable narrator for events of sixty years ago? Probably not. But for now, that’s all we’ve got.

Rene mentions that he even posed for Vincent for a sketch. Interestingly, a sketch from that time does exist, which shows a young man wearing a cowboy hat, it is done with chalk on paper, and until Rene Secretan came forward, in 1957, it was unclear who this boy could have been.

Van Gogh: The Life goes on:

“Although he agreed to pose at least once (fishing on the riverbank), Rene used his “chummy” proximity to Vincent primarily as a cover for more elaborate forms of mischief and provocation. “Our favorite game,” said Rene, “was making him angry, which was easy.” It was Rene, an athletic drinker, who bought the painter round after round of Pernod at the local poacher’s bar. It was Rene who, after discovering Vincent’s taste for the pornography that he and his friends traded in, paraded his Parisian girlfriends in the painter’s presence, fondling and kissing them to torment poor Toto (as they called him), and encouraging the girls (some of them dancers from the Moulin Rouge) to tease and torment him by pretending to show amorous interest in him.”

Knowing all of that, and the context of the Secretan brothers, let’s examine a list which points to accidental homicide, otherwise known in legal terms as manslaughter.

1. Rene Secretan admits to having a revolver at the time. Which compliments his fixation for the Buffalo Bill character which was an American export popular at the time. He also admits, according to the authors of Van Gogh: The Life, that the gun would occasionally misfire.

2. The Secretan brothers relentlessly tormented Vincent while he worked. Is it possible that on one such occasion, on July 27th, Rene Secretan pointed the gun at Vincent? And it inadvertently fired? This could explain the odd location of the wound: on his stomach.

3. Vincent does not leave a suicide note or a goodbye letter, which we can imagine could have been something meaningful for someone as thoughtful as Vincent.

4. The local belief in the town of Auvers, for many decades after 1890, is that Vincent was accidentally shot by the Secretan brothers, and as a final act of martyrdom, he refused to accuse them, and accepted his death as a convenient means to an end. This local belief has been confirmed by the writer, John Rewald, who traveled to Auvers in the 1930s and interviewed the older residents of the town who remembered the incident.

5. It explains why no one ever found Vincent’s painting supplies, canvas, and easel. If someone shot him, even if accidentally, they may have been inclined to hide the scene of the crime, dumping or burying all the supplies near the river, assuming that Vincent would die in the field without making it back to the Inn.

6. An article in The American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology, Volume 41, titled A Reevaluation of the Death of Vincent van Gogh. States this: Although little is known how Vincent sustained his mortal wound, art historians have long believed that the death was the result of a suicide, a widely accepted “truth” for the mysterious death of the then unknown and now iconic artist. The basis and validity of this suicide narrative is still very hotly debated among van Gogh scholars to this day. We dug deeper into all the circumstantial evidence and testimonies to arrive at a comprehensive overview of the probability that it was likely impossible for Vincent to self-inflict his mortal wound. We used all the available circumstantial evidence related to the day Vincent van Gogh was wounded to present the information and conclusions as if we were before a judge as expert witnesses to answer the question: suicide or murder? If Vincent did not shoot himself in the belly (a red flag in and of itself), whoever inflicted that penetrating wound into his abdomen murdered him. In our study, results from firing the same model revolver that allegedly killed Vincent from various ranges (direct contact, intermediate, and distant) demonstrated within a reasonable degree of medical probability (greater than 50%) that it was not probable for Vincent van Gogh to shoot himself without a described powder burn.

7. The gun brandished by Rene Secretan was later revealed to be a revolver owned by Gustave Ravoux, the owner of the Inn in which Vincent was staying. Adeline Ravoux, his daughter, admitted this many years later, in an interview in 1960, although she did not tie in Rene Secretan into her version of the events. She continued to maintain that Vincent somehow found or stole the revolver, perhaps to protect her father. The reasoning here is that the Secretans were part of a wealthy family vacationing in the area, and Gustave Ravoux would have extra incentive at the time to avoid incriminating them. He also likely did not want to implicate himself by revealing that he had lent his revolver to the notoriously irresponsible youth, Rene Secretan.

8. Vincent spoke of death and suicide often, death was an eventuality he accepted, but suicide he often derided. In an 1882 letter to Theo he quoted Millet, saying “It has always seemed to me that suicide was the deed of a dishonest man.”

9. Rene Secretan does not admit he shot Vincent. But if we assume he did, it would explain why no gun was ever found (in the case that the revolver found in the 1960’s is not the one used in the shooting.) Secretan may have eventually returned the gun he used to Gustave Ravoux, or thrown it in the river in a panic, or Gustave Ravoux could have disposed of it himself.

And these are all the most relevant details that support the theory of Vincent being accidentally shot by Rene Secretan.

It’s a lot to take in.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury… Concerning the case of the gunshot that killed Vincent van Gogh. You have been given all the evidence available from both scenarios. Which do you find to be the truth? In your opinion, which is the most plausible?

Scenario 1: Suicide.
Scenario 2: Homicide.

I will give you some time to deliberate. If you would like, during this brief intermission, you can message me your answer on social media, you can find me on Instagram: @mjdorian. Just tell me ’Scenario 1’ or ‘Scenario 2.’

After the intermission, I will return with my interpretation of the events.

[Intermission]

Ok. And we’re back.

Over the last five months I’ve been studying Vincent… his life, his personal letters, and his artworks. It’s the nature of these deep dive episodes—I immerse myself in the life and the mind of these rare individuals. I see it as the only way to find the most meaningful discoveries. In that time, I have shared many of my most important insights about Vincent’s mind and his creativity with you. I’ve honestly lost count of how many of Vincent’s letters I’ve read, it’s somewhere in the hundreds. And the countless passages I’ve underlined, many of which never made it into these episodes, but informed them nonetheless. Not to mention countless hours spent reflecting on the trials and tribulations this uncommon and exceptional human being faced.

There may be some levity throughout this episode or some moments in others, but there is no levity felt in reflecting on this subject, the reality of his death and the scenario which I’m about to share, which I believe completes the picture.

I think Vincent pulled the trigger.

I don’t think it was a suicide attempt… not in the traditional sense… I think it was a psychotic episode.

Yeah. It’s sad and tragic. But I think it’s the truth. And we already know all of the evidence proves it. I’ll show you.

Everything else, all of the theories and conjecture and the insistence for unraveling the red herrings… it’s all our denial, our mind trying reason an alternate path… something that sounds more reasonable, because our mind cannot fathom what that is… to be in a place beyond reason. A place where cutting off one’s ear, a place where eating turpentine, or shooting oneself in the stomach makes sense.

Coming to this realization, accepting it, it wasn’t easy. Over the last month I have, like many people, seesawed back and forth, day to day, between thinking the Secretan brothers were to blame or being convinced that it was Vincent’s own hand that fired the gun. Sometimes my conviction would change hour to hour.

There are just so many red herrings in this story to get lost in. The longer you look at one detail or witness account the more questions you have. Not less. And nearly everyone in this event is an unreliable narrator… from Gustave Ravoux and his daughter Adeline, to the townsfolk of Auvers and Rene Secretan.

In all of the versions of that fateful day which I have read in books or seen depicted in films or documentaries, I noticed this fixation on the unknowns… a fixation on filling in the empty spaces with conjecture.

But that’s where I think everyone gets it wrong… In my theory on what happened, I focus on three things we know, and the importance of those things, their primacy in the events of that day, rather than the bottomless void of things we don’t know.

It’s unsettling not to know. The mind cannot see a void and stand content before it. It fills the void with ghosts and phantoms…possibilities. It measures the void and says ‘this part resembles that part’ and tests the void’s depth with questions. It is as Emily Dickinson said “the abyss has no biographer.”

Vincent pulled the trigger.

Here are three factors that prove it.

FACTOR ONE: Theo’s account of the events is the only reliable account.

Everyone in Auvers that day had reason to embellish and push and pull the truth, or tell an outright lie to achieve some hidden virtue… Everyone…except Theo.

Of all the people, he is the one who spent the most personal and intimate time with Vincent after the shooting. And he is the one who knows him more deeply than anyone on Earth. He stayed with him, in the attic room, all of July 28th, until midnight. And so, we must respect his telling of events over all others. We cannot make the mistake of looking at the heresay of the other witnesses as equivalent to Theo’s account. He has no motivation to embellish. His account does not serve to protect anyone.

On the morning of July 28th, the letter Theo receives from Dr. Gachet states “Vincent has wounded himself.” This is the first impression from the doctor at his bedside. He phrased his words deliberately, he did not say Vincent has been shot, but that he has wounded himself.

Theo writes a letter to Johanna that same day, after spending a few hours by Vincent’s bedside and consulting with the doctors. Among the various details we find these statements:

“If he’s better tonight, I’ll go back to Paris tomorrow morning, but if not, I shall stay on here. Poor fellow, he wasn’t granted a lavish share of happiness and he no longer harbors any illusions. He was lonely, and sometimes it was more than he could bear. Don’t be too sad, my love, you know I tend to paint things blacker than they are. Perhaps he’ll recover yet and see better times …”

On the morning of July 28th, it was still unclear how serious Vincent’s wound was. When the doctors first arrive, Gustave Ravoux claims to have heard Vincent yell “When will someone cut this bullet out of my stomach?”

One of the main elements of the Secretan brothers theory, is that Vincent knew it was a fatal wound which provided him the convenient death he long sought, and so, he chose to avoid incriminating Rene Secretan because he wanted to die anyway.

It’s a compelling argument. And based on Vincent’s temperament, I don’t deny that he might have welcomed death.

But this theory has no merit when we realize that according to Theo, Vincent, and the doctor’s in those initial hours, they believe he will survive. The doctors reassure him that his vitals are fine and there is no excessive bleeding, which is why they don’t rush him to a Paris hospital.

And paradoxically, counter to both theories of Scenario 1 + 2, Vincent may have even wanted to survive, as he was asking about the surgery to remove the bullet. Why would he want the bullet removed if he was expecting and wanting to die?

It was only in the final hours, later that night, when the severity of the wound becomes clear, that Vincent tells Theo he is accepting death.

In that early haze, when Theo arrives, he finds Vincent in good spirits, smoking his pipe, this is confirmed in his first letter to Jo from that day. If Vincent had been accidentally shot, he would have no incentive to lie to Theo at that point. He would have said “I was shot accidentally by some stupid bastards!”

We have to remember that the Secretan brothers are not Vincent’s friends. And they are not children, they were teenagers, of high school age. He has no reason to protect them. They were jerks to him, and bullied him at any chance they had. And we have to remember that Vincent is no pushover either. Yes, he is a sensitive artist type, but we shouldn’t trap ourselves in painting him as a soft and harmless individual. Were the Secretan brothers assholes? Yes. Is that enough of a reason to try them for murder? No. If being an asshole was a crime, then the prisons would be overflowing… but I digress.

Rene Secretan mentions that Vincent would fly into fits of rage at their pranks, and it was the main reason they kept picking on him, to watch him get angry.

So again, if Vincent is assuming he will live, he has no reason to cover for the Secretan brothers. What would you do? If you were accidentally shot by assholes and assumed everything was going to be ok… Would you instead lie and say it was a botched suicide attempt? It makes no sense. Let’s put that theory to rest.

There is another passing phrase in Theo’s account to Johanna that is very telling, when he writes: “Is it not strange that I was so nervous and uneasy all of last week, as if I had a premonition that something would happen.”

What is Theo talking about here?

It turns out that in recent letters to Theo, in the last week, Vincent doesn’t seem to be himself, he seems to be anxious or disturbed. He mentions incoming personal storms, domestic quarrels in Theo’s household, and the fear that he is a burden on Theo.

In a rare letter from Theo to Jo, dated July 20th, Theo mentions this: “I understand from Vincent’s letter that what he means by domestic quarrels are my attempts to achieve my own ends in the matters I discussed with Dries, (your brother.) That’s the only explanation I can think of, it’s certainly not clear. If only he’s not melancholy and heading for another crisis, it was all going so well.’”

In response to Vincent’s odd letter, Theo writes:

“I hope, my dear Vincent, that your health is good — but as you said that you’re writing with difficulty and don’t speak to me about your work, I’m a little afraid that there’s something that’s bothering you or that isn’t going right. In that case, do go and see Dr Gachet, he’ll perhaps give you something that will buck you up again. Give me news of you as soon as possible.”

In a letter Vincent writes in response, we find these passages, of uncharacteristically brief paragraphs:

“My dear brother,
Thanks for your letter of today and for the 50-franc note it contained.

I’d perhaps like to write to you about many things—but first the desire has passed to such a degree—then I sense the pointlessness of it.

I hope that you’ll have found those gentlemen favourably disposed towards you.

As regards the state of peace in your household, I’m just as convinced of the possibility of preserving it as of the storms that threaten it.”

These statements don’t sound like the Vincent we have heard in countless other letters… Who, even in the restraints of the asylum, seems to find—hopeful perspectives. Perhaps it indicates emotional turmoil or an onset of depression. There is an ominous tone, certainly the impression Theo mentioned to Jo later. And that opening phrase is so… defeated, when he writes: “I’d perhaps like to write to you about many things, but first the desire has passed to such a degree, then I sense the pointlessness of it.”

On July 25th, exactly two days before Vincent is shot, Theo writes this passage in a letter to Jo… It is about his confusion in reading that same letter:

“There was a letter from Vincent which again I find incomprehensible. We’ve not fallen out, either with him or with each other.”

Theo was right… something was off.

Which brings us to our second factor.

FACTOR TWO: Vincent shoots himself during a psychotic episode.

Vincent pulled the trigger, but it wasn’t a suicide attempt, not in the traditional sense. It was a recurring element of his psychotic episodes: self harm.

We know that in the aftermath of these psychotic episodes, his mind is often cloudy and confused. And in all of them, including the ear incident and the ingesting of paints and turpentine, he had an amnesia for what was said and done.

This is why he couldn’t clearly explain himself in the aftermath of the shooting. When the officers ask him: “Did you try to kill yourself?” Vincent’s response is “I believe so.”

In Van Gogh: The Life, the authors use that ‘I believe so’ phrase to indicate that Vincent was still getting his story straight concerning covering for the Secretan brothers.

But I don’t buy it.

It’s something even stranger… he didn’t remember. He didn’t know what he had done or why. And the only person that understands that aspect of his condition is Theo. Everyone else at the scene probably thinks that is a strange response to give, either you did it or you didn’t do it… but Theo understands. He’s seen this before.

He is intimately aware. In that moment, he likely recalls laying next to his brother in the hospital at Arles, on Christmas Day, and Vincent being unable to recall what happened that led him to cut off his ear.

There was no reason to press Vincent anymore than that… Theo knew that he wouldn’t remember.

But if you are paying attention to the details, you might say ‘Well… why did he leave with his paints, supplies, and easel? If he was suffering a psychotic episode, how could he be lucid enough to paint?’

Yes, very good point. There is one account from exactly a year ago that proves relevant here.

Recall in Episode 24, when Vincent is in the asylum, he suffers three major debilitating psychotic episodes. The last one is in August, a month in which he only paints 2 paintings, and doesn’t response to Theo’s letter for 30 days.

When he does finally respond, on August 22nd, he mentions this:

“This new crisis, my dear brother, came upon me in the fields, and when I was in the middle of painting on a windy day.”

That crisis occurs somewhere around the middle of July of 1889, rough estimates place it either July 16th or 17th. Almost exactly a year to the day to when he shoots himself on July 27th 1890, under remarkably similar circumstances, out painting in the fields.

The anxiety of an uncertain future, the stress of knowing his brother may not be able to support him in two months time, the anxiety of still not being a successful artist despite putting in ten years into the goal, the loneliness of being in a town with no friends or family… I mean… I would likely have a mental breakdown too. But in Vincent’s case, we know those factors, as they have in the past, put him on a perilous track toward another attack.

Add to that the unknown effects that drinking and smoking have on his underlying and undiagnosed condition, and it is a recipe for disaster. We know Dr. Gachet recommends to Vincent about a month ago that he stop drinking and smoking just in case it is exacerbating his condition… Vincent chooses not to listen. Please understand, I’m not blaming Vincent here. It is just the recipe of a tragedy.

FACTOR THREE: Vincent’s behavior in the aftermath of the shooting is identical to the aftermath of the ear incident.

This one… when I realized it… hit me like a ton of bricks. And yet, it is not mentioned by any biographers or in any documentaries… Again, they get too wrapped up in the unknowns… This one is so obvious that everyone seems to miss it.

In the aftermath of the ‘ear incident,’ in December of 1888, Vincent is in the hospital of Arles. When Theo arrives, after receiving a telegram from Paul Gauguin, he first stops at the Yellow House, assuming Gauguin will be coming with him to see Vincent.

Theo is told that Vincent has been calling for Gauguin, like a madman, in fits, to tell him not to summon Theo. The reason is never stated… But I think we can imagine it is a mixture of embarrassment, regret, confusion… He does not want to face his dear brother in this state, and have to explain why he cut off his own ear… After everything Theo has done for him.

The reality is setting in — in the aftermath of the psychotic episode.

Flash forward to July 28th of 1890, Vincent is on his bed in the aftermath of the shooting. Dr. Gachet tells Vincent they must contact Theo so he can come… Vincent vehemently rejects this idea, raising his voice, and pleading with them not to contact Theo… he even refuses to give Dr. Gachet Theo’s home address, and Dr. Gachet instead has to send the man with the letter to Theo’s art gallery.

Why? … embarrassment, regret, confusion. He does not want to face his dear brother in this state, and have to explain why he shot himself… After everything Theo has done for him.

The reality is setting in — in the aftermath of the psychotic episode.

[music break]

It is these three factors that convince me Vincent pulled the trigger:

1. Theo’s reliable account of the events before and after the shooting.

2. Vincent’s psychotic episode which caused the shooting, and the confusion that followed.

3. Vincent’s embarrassment in the aftermath, and his intense protests to contacting Theo. Identical to his behavior following a similar psychotic episode a year and a half ago.

And that’s where I stand. He shot himself in the midst of a psychotic episode, an act of irrational self harm, a recurring aspect of his mental illness, without the deliberate intention of suicide.

As for the gun… if we want to entertain our need to fill a void. It is known to have been Gustave Ravoux who lent his revolver to Rene Secretan. And Secretan claims in his interview that Vincent knew the boys often took swims in the nearby river and left their things near the trees on the riverbank. He could have taken it from them on one of these occasions, there’s no doubt he did not trust Secretan with it, I would have certainly taken it from him too. Vincent may have intended to give it back to Gustave Ravoux, or to keep it out of Rene Secretan’s hands for a little longer, as he knew the Secretan brothers were only there on holiday.

But again, we have to be careful trying to answer these unknowns with possibilities, maybe it was something else entirely, perhaps Vincent just found a revolver on a tree stump. We don’t know. But if we stick to respecting what we do know, which are three factors: Theo’s account before and after the incident, Vincent’s impending psychotic episode likely occurring that day, and Vincent’s confused and self conscious behavior after the incident, identical to his other episodes, they point us clearly to the truth.

[music break]

Chapter Seven: Johanna & Theo

In the days and weeks that follow Vincent’s death… Theo is undone by grief. The memories of Vincent become all he can think about, and all he wants to talk about. He visits with acquaintances who knew Vincent, sharing stories about him for hours.

He writes to Jo “How empty it is everywhere. I miss him so; everything seems to remind me of him.”

The book Van Gogh: The Life states this:

“He spent hours digging through the piles of Vincent’s letters that he had stuffed into a dining room cupboard—often with relief—along with all his other correspondence. Alone with his brother again, he relived the years of trials and tribulations, and a new resolve formed. He wrote to his mother ‘I find such interesting things in Vincent’s letters, and it would be a remarkable book if one could see how much thinking he did and how he remained true to himself.” Calling it “a book that has to be written,”…

His new stated mission becomes to give his brother, in death, the success and appreciation he deserved in life.

But a new storm is coming. Almost as if Vincent’s ominous phrase in his final letter to Theo had been prophetic, when he said: “As regards the state of peace in your household, I’m just as convinced of the possibility of preserving it as of the storms that threaten it.”

Theo’s health had been precarious for years. It is assumed by some biographers that he had contracted a disease from visiting brothels with Vincent when they were together in Paris, years ago. Within two months after Vincent’s death, Theo’s mental and physical health begins to rapidly decline. Worse than it’s ever been.

Theo quits his art dealership job. He begins to exhibit paranoia and sudden outbursts of anger, even sometimes directed at Johanna and their child. He is neglecting his sleep, his health, and even his clothes.

The doctors officially diagnose him with syphilis. A claim that Johanna refuses to believe. They seek second opinions, and third opinions. But there is no denying it. It is known that syphilis can cause damage to the heart and brain, sometimes giving the effects which resemble dementia or psychosis.

On October 8th, 1890, Theo is admitted to a hospital in Paris. Two days later, the doctors transfer him to a private asylum. The book Van Gogh: The Life paints the picture:

“After that, his path mostly followed Vincent’s. There were some differences. Theo was physically far sicker than his brother when he surrendered his freedom. Bu now, the paralysis afflicted his whole body. At times, he could not walk at all.

Far more frail than Vincent, in mind as well as in body, he suffered wilder and more dangerous bouts of delirium. He threw furniture and tore at his clothes so violently that he had to be chloroformed into passivity. Instead of young interns like Felix Rey, the best doctors in France attended his case.”

A month later, Jo arranges for Theo to be moved from France to an asylum in Holland, closer to family. They transfer Theo to that asylum by train, in a straightjacket, accompanied by guards.

Two months later…on January 24th, 1891, Theo van Gogh dies.

Just six months after Vincent.

The scope of both tragedies together is difficult to comprehend.

Even more difficult is to imagine what Johanna must be feeling at this time. Their son, Vincent Willem van Gogh Jr is turning one year old, only seven days later, on January 31st.

I’ve always assumed that Theo was the custodian of Vincent’s work and memory after he died, and that it was Theo who made Vincent a household name… but no.

It is Johanna.

There are two heroes in this story… Theo… and Johanna.

Somehow, by some unbelievable willpower, character, and conviction, Johanna picks up the torch. She decides to honor her husband’s memory by devoting her life’s work to bringing Vincent’s art and story to the world.

Just imagine it… her beloved Theo dies, after wrestling with a severe mental decline that she witnessed for six months. And Jo is left with a one year old child to care for and a job to maintain. As if that wasn’t enough, she now has 900 Vincent van Gogh paintings entrusted to her care, and hundreds of letters.

Oh yeah, did we mention that she is not an art dealer? And has no experience working in the art market. (And she is the only woman at that time stepping into a male profession.)

Her story truly needs to be told.

I have tried to track down biographies but have only found one, which was published in Dutch. Of course. An English translation was supposed to be released in 2020, but it wasn’t, and there is no update on the Van Gogh Museum site at this time.

She is a hero in this story, she deserves to be celebrated, and her story deserves to be told. But in all the biographies about Vincent, she is equivalent to a footnote. At the end of Van Gogh: The Life, the authors expand on the nuanced details of Theo’s death, and how syphilis ate him from the inside for six pages, and then spend one sentence on the last page, mentioning that Johanna helped publish the first letters from Vincent and oversaw the sale of his works.

That’s it? That’s all she gets?

There’s a lot I love about this particular biography of Vincent, by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith… I know they put a truly admirable amount of research into it. But… that’s not right. If it wasn’t for Johanna, we would have no Vincent van Gogh. His artwork and his story would be a footnote of art history. And I know she didn’t do it to seek credit, but come on… she is a hero in this story.

Side note: you can see pictures of Johanna and little Vincent on my site. Just go to mjdorian.com/vincent and click on the Companion Gallery associated with this episode.

Here is some information about Johanna I’ve been able to stitch together from my research. It will give us a perspective on the enormity of the task she took on.

After Theo’s tragic death, Johanna moves with little Vincent to the small town of Bussum, 15 miles from Holland. She begins to make her living running a boarding house, what we would today call a bed & breakfast. She also works as an English translator. The household duties keep her very busy, but provide her a steady income, and time at home to care for son.

It is within a year of Theo’s tragic death that she decides to pickup the torch. To carry on the work Theo pursued throughout Vincent’s life, and which he dedicated himself to after Vincent’s death.

In a diary entry dated November 1891, Johanna writes:

“It’s all nothing but a dream! What lies behind me – my short, blissful marital happiness – that, too, has been a dream! For a year and a half I was the happiest woman on earth; it was a long, beautiful, wonderful dream, the most beautiful one can dream. And following it was all that untold suffering that I cannot touch upon – I lost him, my dear, faithful husband – who made my life so rich, so full, who awakened everything that was good in me, who not only loved me but who understood what I was lacking and wanted to teach me.

…the child he gave me, his image with his blue eyes and his friendly features, his gentle, tender nature, his rich talents, his child is now my treasure, my comfort, my support, my all, to whom I cling and who gives me the courage to go on living.

And so I’ve started writing my diary again – not for the sentimental outpourings I wrote down as a young girl – (what a lot of nonsense I often proclaimed) – but for a moment of self-analysis and self-examination now and then, to keep a better watch on myself and develop a little, if possible. I must use all my strength to learn again so that I may be of some use to my boy later and he will not look down on his mother with contempt – as so many boys, and rightly, have to do alas. Will I ever be able to be a support and help to him? I can do no more than my best.

Theo taught me a lot about art – no, let me say rather that he taught me a lot about life, I learnt everything through him: the greatest bliss – the greatest suffering, that teaches us to understand everything else! As well as the child, he has left me another task – Vincent’s work – getting it seen and appreciated as much as possible – keeping all the treasures that Theo and Vincent had collected intact for the child – that, too, is my work.

I’m not without purpose – but I do feel lonely and abandoned – all the same, there are moments of great serenity – that the satisfaction of my work gives me. If I may just maintain the health to work for our child – then my life will not have been devastated by the loss of my husband – but I shall always bless him and thankfully love him for all the happiness he once gave me.”

Johanna contacts galleries and museums. The museums want nothing to do with an unknown painter, even if he already completed a substantial body of work: 900 paintings. So she starts small: just a small gallery showing here and another there.

And slowly but surely, artists and art critics begin to notice. Local newspaper articles begin to mention a recent Vincent van Gogh exhibit, and the tragic story that is tied to the works. The curiosity grows with each new exhibition. She collects all the reviews about the exhibitions, and writes back to the authors, building her network in the art world, one step at a time.

Johanna is first looked at with curious suspicion, she is a woman dipping her toes into a male dominated art industry of the 1890’s, she has no experience, she is not an art historian… but she educates herself, shows a knack for negotiation, and starts to gain her respect in the art world.

It is around this time that she begins to develop a new obsession as well: translating Vincent and Theo’s many letters. She opens the enormous cabinet that contains hundreds of them, some without dates, without context, and sits every night at her desk… chronologically organizing them, then translating them one by one into English using a typewriter.

[typewriter sound effect]

In a journal entry marked: March 6, 1892, she writes:

“These last days I have spent every free hour I had absorbed in the letters. I postponed it far too long, but from now on I am going to undertake it as a regular task – working steadily on until it is finished. Not with the passion of the first days – for then I was occupied with it until deep into the night – such extravagances I must not permit myself. My foremost duty is to be spry and healthy to be able to care for the child.

In thought I am living wholly with Theo and Vincent, oh, the infinitely delicate, tender and lovely [quality] of that relation. How they felt for each other, how they understood each other, and oh, how touching Vincent’s dependence at times – Theo never let him feel it, but now and then he feels it himself, and then his letters are very sad – often I wept over them.

My darling – my dear – dear Theo – at every word, between every two lines, I am thinking of you – how you made me part of yourself in the short time we were together – I am still living with you, by you. May your spirit go on inspiring me, then everything will be all right with our little fellow.

Who will write that book about Vincent?…”

In 1905, Johanna finally achieves the unthinkable… Vincent’s work is featured in a solo show in a museum in Amsterdam, which displays 400 of his paintings… the exhibition is a triumph.

Requests begin to pour in to purchase Vincent’s paintings. In her years of learning the ropes of the art market, Johanna developed into a bold negotiator. She often refuses to sell, knowing that the interest will only grow and the work’s value only increase. When she feels someone undervalues a work by bidding low, she instead raises the price.

Eventually, arrangements and deals are made with specific museums. And in 1914, after 22 years of transcribing and translating Vincent and Theo’s letters, the first volume of Vincent’s letters is published.

By this point… there will still be challenges in her life’s journey, but the most difficult and tragic days are behind her. It is like she carries with her the courage and strength of Vincent, with the unwavering devotion and patience of Theo. Perhaps it was this part of her temperament, which made Theo fall in love with her so quickly when they first met.

You can just imagine her, in those first few years, in the wake of dual tragedies. On countless nights standing in a moonlit window, near a desk littered with Theo and Vincent’s letters, holding little Vincent.

Rocking him to sleep, while ruminating on all of it… on the rare bond shared between the two brothers… on Vincent’s genius… And how she will make that legacy known while caring for this child… and the torch they will both now carry.

All while sweetly singing him to sleep. A tragic melody, that reminds her of Theo & Vincent… and the audacity to have courage and hope in the face of life’s most difficult storms.

[Music with Johanna’s voice]

 

 

 

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