The Truth About Vincent Van Gogh

However you pronounce his name, one thing is for certain: Van Gogh made made his mark on the world. But how did he interact with the world around him? From his relationship with a sex worker in the Hague to his time at the asylum in the south of France. Joining Kate today is Teio Meedendorp, Senior Researcher at the Van Gogh Museum, to help us get to know this complex man better. *TW: This episode contains references to self harm and suicide.* This episode was edited by Tim Arstall and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddy Chick. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener surveyhere https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK. All music from Epidemic Sounds. Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards! UK & Ireland listeners please place your vote on the Spotify mobile app here: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Kate Lister?

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• 0:37Speaker 01

  In Our Time is a world-class seminar every week. Why was Jeremy a lonely snail? What were lines doing in York in the 3rd century? I'm Misha Glennie, and every week I'm joined by expert guests to explore the ideas that shape our world.

• 0:53Speaker 02

  It's one of the first times, really, that you consistently see someone painting teeth. I know that sounds bonkers.

• 0:57Speaker 03

  If I was going to define mathematics, I would say it's the study of structure.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  In Our Time, listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Tea or coffee? Love a cup of tea.

• 1:11Kate Lister?

  Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Liston. You are listening to Betwixt the Sheets. Hello, welcome back. Thanks for dropping by. Lovely to see you. We'll put the kettle on. But before we do, I have to tell you, and any newbies who've wandered in, this is an adult podcast, spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way, covering a range of adult subjects, and you should be an adult, too. Oh, God, I feel safer. Do you feel safer? Is everyone less triggered? Excellent. Right, on with the show.

• 1:44Kate Lister?

  I do love an evening stroll, betwixters, don't you? And this one just feels extra special. We're strolling through the village of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in 1889. The stars are out. It's a very starry, starry night. And not far from here, one Vincent van Gogh—actually, how the hell you pronounce this man's name—will feature quite prominently, but whatever you call him, he's gazing up at the stars from his asylum room and feeling inspired to put paint on canvas. What will become Starry Night is being created, and maybe he knows it, maybe he doesn't. I suspect he probably does, but this is going to be a masterpiece. Behind the paintbrush lies a fascinating figure, as complex and colourful as anything

• 2:29Kate Lister?

  he ever chose to paint. The people that know him and loved him, and there were a few, describe a very volatile person, somebody who, oh, like he's good at doing a painting, but I don't think you want him around for too long, if you know what I mean. He's also a man that was au fait with brothels and taverns and, well, quite a bit of absinthe. So yeah, a complex person, and I can't wait to find out more about him.

• 3:19Kate Lister?

  Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister. However it is that you pronounce his name, Van Gogh, Van Gok, Van Go, Van Hooker, whatever it is, one thing is for certain, that Vincent knew a thing or two about translating his feelings to canvas. We all know about his tragic struggles with mental health, but what else do we know about this man's life? What's the story about his obsession with a sex worker in The Hague? Did he really cut his ear off and why did he do that? And who were the greatest loves of his life? Well, joining me today is Ty Omeendorp, senior researcher at the Van Gogh Museum, to help us get to know this man a little bit better. So sunflowers

• 4:04Kate Lister?

  and easels at the ready, everybody, let's do this.

• 4:14Kate Lister?

  Hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets, it's only Ty Omeendorp, how are you doing?

• 4:21Speaker 04

  I'm good, thank you, Kate, thanks very much and thanks for joining in this, today's programme.

• 4:25Kate Lister?

  Oh no, it's an absolute pleasure. I've been wanting to talk about, well, hang on, hang on, how are we gonna say this? Because that's, that's the first question that I am gonna start with here. I would say Van Gok, the Americans say Van Go. And I know that you, as a Dutch person, a Dutch speaker, and he was Dutch, how would he have said his own name?

• 4:49Speaker 04

  He would have said his own name as van Hoog.

• 4:52Kate Lister?

  Hoog.

• 4:52Speaker 04

  That's right, these god-ruled G's that we have in our language. But there is a reason why he always cited Vincent. Because he knew that his last name would not exactly work in the art society. And even the first time that he have exhibited is that Theo in the catalogue wrote that the artist was Vincent van Hoog. And he explicitly wrote to his brother, said, never mention his last name again, it's Vincent. Because people can't pronounce my last name. And from the first start, when he signed his first works, it was Vincent. I'm used to saying Van Gogh because Van Gogh is different. I mean, Van Gogh is more or less international, you might say. So I probably switched between Vincent, Van Gogh and van Hoog.

• 5:31Kate Lister?

  Shall we say Go? I'm gonna go for Go. I don't trust myself with the correct pronunciation. That must have been really irritating for him, that people couldn't pronounce his last name.

• 5:40Speaker 04

  I'm not quite sure. I mean, he had a very good, straightforward first name. It put him on the ranks of Rembrandt, I mean Michelangelo, Leonardo.

• 5:47Kate Lister?

  Yes, good point. Yeah, just Vincent. Yeah.

• 5:51Speaker 04

  Just Vincent. I don't think he was exactly that conscious about using his name in that sense, as his work would have been known by this, simply by his first name. But it did come in handy.

• 6:02Kate Lister?

  Well, one of the most famous artists today has got to be up there, hasn't he? With the, I mean, if you say famous artist, it's probably Vincent is the one most people would be thinking of.

• 6:12Speaker 04

  I'm afraid it is, yeah. I mean, I remember from going around the world sometimes, I remember being in the holiday, all in the way in most southern points in Europe and in South America on Fireland. And we came there where we were tired and everything, and we checked into our hotel and it came into the room and what was on the wall? A reproduction of Vincent's orchard, one of the only orchards. You can't escape him. It's a bit like Coca-Cola and it's a bit the same with Vincent, yes.

• 6:37Kate Lister?

  Well, you certainly can't escape him because you're a senior researcher at the Van Gogh Museum.

• 6:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, he's been following me for quite some time.

• 6:47Kate Lister?

  What brought you to study this man, his life and his work?

• 6:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's weirdly enough, it's more or less by chance. When I began starting art history, it was in the early eighties, nineteen eighties. When you're young, you're eighteen, nineteen years old, and you think, well, everything's already been written about these famous artists like Vincent and like Rembrandt and all the other ones. And then by chance, I was supposed to be having an internship in Amsterdam at a film museum because I was also doing something with film history. And that didn't go through. And then somebody arranged for me that I could do an internship in the Van Gogh Museum. And I hadn't thought about it, but then I was allowed, which was great, and four and a half years, it was in nineteen eighty-eight, I believe. I was allowed to make an exhibition here with Vincent's drawings and the illustrated magazines that he collected, the prints thereof.

• 7:33Speaker 04

  And in the end, it was such a nice subject, in the sense that not much had been written about it, that I wrote my thesis about it, and I simply graduated then at my university level in Vincent. I have always had this particular liking to his work. In a sense, because I didn't immediately have a job here at the Van Gogh Museum or whatever, I had to find my way, you might say. Now I worked for university first and did research on occult movements and late nineteenth century art for something completely different. But at the same time, I've been living in Amsterdam since the early nineteen nineties. I would always do guided tours in the Van Gogh Museum. And then in the end, I first got a job at another museum, the Krolle Mullen Museum in the Netherlands, which has the second largest collection of Fajoh works, drawings and paintings as well as drawings in the world.

• 8:17Speaker 04

  And there we made with team two collection catalogs of the Fajoh paintings and the Fajoh drawings. And that's when I really went in deep, you might say. And searching after that, since it's of two thousand and nine, I am associated with Van Gogh Museum as a researcher, now senior researcher, and we've become a little bit older. And all my life is dedicated to the life and work of Vincent Fajoh.

• 8:39Kate Lister?

  Vincent is one of those artists where the man and his life and his mythology seems to be inextricably tied up with his art. Like, I know there's this, we're supposed to separate the art from the artist, and there are artists who, Renaissance artists, we know their works, we know next to nothing about the person who did it, but the work is famous. Vincent has this mythology as, and you can disabuse me of this, but this tortured artist, this madman roving the fields in Provence, raving and shouting and eventually taking his own life. How much of that do you think is tied up with his artwork? Can you separate them?

• 9:22Speaker 04

  Well, we tried to a little bit. I mean, it's impossible to entirely separate it, but you have to be careful to associate everything he made with it. What we do is, in fact, make some kind of a distinguishment, would be distinguished earlier from the later period. And in that which more or less means that the time that he was in the south of France, so when he was in Paris, which is in his development, very important two years that he was there, because his work completely changes, but also his life changes, being in a big city. And he becomes more and more addicted to alcohol. So he had an alcohol problem which he developed in Paris. And with a situation by himself, he was melancholic at heart, which did not mean that he was severely depressive or something like that,

• 10:04Speaker 04

  but he was, but like, well, you have these, even as children, they're a bit apart, they can be melancholy to more to themselves. It doesn't necessarily mean that they have some kind of a disease or whatever or matter, but it's their situation in life. And with Vincent, when, when you start to abuse alcohol and things like that, things can get worse. And it is quite clear from the, when he was in the south of France, in Arles, and when Gauguin came, and he was hoping that something would flourish, that they would work together, and they would make a next step. Because he was ambitious as well in, in getting modern art further off the ground, and that totally collapsed. And when he came to the period that he in a rage that he cut off his ear inflicted pain on him himself, you might say, from that moment on when he was hospitalized and

• 10:48Speaker 04

  he came into hospital and it was only two, three days when he was in hospital and he didn't have access to alcohol, that he had probably his first psychosis that was in hospital. So it was not his psychosis what led to him cutting off his ear, but it was the not getting to the alcohol, I mean, the abst- abstinence of alcohol that created the problem. And that's the major point where his life is going to change and how he looks at life in general. So after that period, he's only in hospital for two weeks and then he comes back to his yellow house, to the studio and then he has the idea, and even the doctors were quite surprised, is that he felt like, well, he had some kind of a flu or whatever, or cold, and boy, you can get better from a cold, but you can't get better from madness in that respect. Okay. And he started, yeah, and he started painting again. But after a couple of weeks,

• 11:33Speaker 04

  he had another small crisis. And he went back to the hospital for a couple of days and then he went back to the yellow house and then he got another crisis. And then the people in the area where he was living in Arles, they signed a petition to get him out of there because this madman, and it was, you might say, created by the people living around him, that they didn't trust him with the children, he was chasing after the women. We don't know exactly now it's true, but it was a more or less reason to get him out of the area. At first, it was the idea perhaps that he could live somewhere else in Arles. But this petition like that, the mayor has to do something. And at some point, it was like, okay, he went back to hospital and he lived, in fact, in hospital, although he was not really sick. And they tried to look for some other place, but there

• 12:16Speaker 04

  were only two possibilities, either he should go somewhere else, or he had to be taken into an asylum or some kind of instant locked away. That, of course, they didn't want. And then in the end, the pastor who took care of him a little bit in Arles, and he was of the Protestant faith, took care and found this asylum of this institute in Saint Rémy. The fifty kilometers north of twenty five, forty, fifty kilometers north of Arles, where it was a private institute. So you were voluntarily hospitalized and you could also leave if you wanted to. If you were deliberately, I mean, if you had, if you were in fact locked away, it would have been very difficult to get out of it again. And for him, it was the most important thing is to get back to his rest because he realized that this is not probably going away easily.

• 12:59Speaker 04

  What he had, this crisis, it was crisis in between the crises, he was pretty lucid. So there was, and he looked back on his crisis of what's going on with me? Can I cure from this? And then the big, by the way, blow came in fact in the summer of eighteen eighty nine. So that's a year before, before he took his own life in the asylum. Is he, he suffered a very severe crisis with a psychosis, was largely so bad for six weeks, in which he could not paint. And when he came out of it crisis, he more or less realizes, okay, my situation is not going to change. I'm going to have to deal with these crises and see what I can make of it. And then it was work, work, work. So he dedicated everything to, to be able to work as much as possible as, as you might say, not to think too much about his problems.

• 13:44Kate Lister?

  Am I right in thinking that he came to art quite, quite, well, for the time, quite late in life? He was twenty seven by the time he decided, I want to be an artist. So what was he doing before that? What was, what was the twenty seven years leading up to that?

• 14:00Speaker 04

  I did a lot of things, yeah, a lot of things.

• 14:02Kate Lister?

  I get the impression that he's quite a difficult person to know, that like if you knew Vincent, you would probably, and like, you know, if you saw his number pop up on your phone, you might be a bit like, oh, God.

• 14:14Speaker 04

  Not today.

• 14:15Kate Lister?

  No, no, not again. Was there signs of this as, as a young man? Or is this something that, that developed with alcohol and with age?

• 14:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, in, in, at the end it developed and age, I mean, he only lived to thirty seven. So I mean, his career as an artist is only ten years, it was his entire career as an artist. No, he was a son of a, well, there was a family of six and he was the eldest. And a family of the, his father was a Protestant minister. And either in the Fajah family, you became either, you would work for an art gallery or you became a minister. So there was the the two flavors, you might say. So he had a couple of uncles who had an art gallery. And the most fortunate one was Uncle Vincent. So he was also called Vincent van Gaal, Uncle Cent, Uncle Vincent. And he had an art gallery in The Hague and he took care a little bit of both the boys, Vincent and Theo, of his brother Theodore.

• 15:06Speaker 04

  And Vincent started working in the gallery in The Hague when he was sixteen years old, so in sixty nine.

• 15:13Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 15:14Speaker 04

  He had some school training at first in in Zandvoort, in the little village where he came from. But was also privately tutored, so my kind of nanny, somebody took care of that. And he went to sort of high school, but not finish it in Tilburg. He appeared quite a good student, I mean, when he was at high school. He knew his French, he knew his English, he knew his German. And when he went to England, well, he worked in The Hague first for for three years at the firm of Copil and Compagnie, as it was called, the art gallery. Who had several franchises, comes from Paris, but they also had an office in London and he was promoted to go to London in eighty seventy three. So when he was twenty years old. And he worked until seventy five. And then at that point, seventy five, seventy six, some problems occur.

• 15:59Speaker 04

  As I said, so he was a bit to himself, you might say, at first, but he liked working in the art galleries and his work there. And he learned a lot about art. And he had an incredible memory. I mean, it's like a computer, it's like a database. But he remembered everything he saw. It's amazing that even much later, when he was an artist, that he can remember very vividly. Not only paintings, but also passages from literature and everything. So it is really, really amazing. So he was an avid reader as well. He would go to museums, would go to galleries, would go to exhibitions. So he fueled himself up, you might say. But he came into a crisis and said, we don't know exactly what it started, but probably had something to do with rejected love. That he that he had around seventy five in in England.

• 16:44Speaker 04

  But he was sent away when there was a new gallery opening of Copil in in London. They took over Holloway and Sons, close to Govan Garden. And he was hoping to be part of that, but he was sent to Paris. So it was like that he was not. A lot there, and that felt as a blow. And when he was in Paris and that he was fired from the art gallery, is that his attention was shifted more and more towards religion. So he really got something in the idea. So religion was taking the place of art, you might say, in this big land. He is trying to find some solace in religion. And in that, of course, he had a father who was a Protestant minister. And he was thinking about, well, I have to do something like father did. I had, I have to make myself useful for the community.

• 17:25Speaker 04

  Help people. I mean, that part has always been very close to Vincent, as also as an almost, let's say, natural inclination is to, to help people. So he could be quiet at one time, he could be socially very inept, but his idea was always to help people. And he was looking also for relationships. I mean, he had several relationships during his life. The earliest serious relationship was when he was twenty years old, which was still in the egg. He was incredibly in love with a girl his age, Caroline, also twenty years at the time. But she chose someone else. And he took it greatly. And he realized afterwards, when he thought about it this then. It was not a relationship which on the same level, in the sense that he was giving a lot, but was not getting a lot back.

• 18:07Kate Lister?

  Well, Ben, there, Vincent.

• 18:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. And well, his ideas about relationships and love are very much rooted in partly in the Bible, what he learned from home. I mean, to, to have a family was very important, but also which he learned from literature, especially Georges Michellet, the French author. Who wrote La Femme, the woman, woman, and l'amour, on love. Partly traditionalist, you might say, Michel, but also very progressive in, in the sense that he gave women a very precise place in society. I mean, that they were actually an active part of society. And that the highest thing to achieve was a kind of bond between man and woman, where one was equal. And but the man was, was had to take care of the woman, but the woman had an active part in society and life as well. With children, obviously, but also a part of society.

• 18:53Speaker 04

  And his ideas were very much influenced by that, you might, you might say. And so he was always looking for a kind of a, a relationship like that. But unfortunately, he always failed. And that has something to do probably also with his, you might say. Stubbornness, I mean, it's a sense, like you just said, when he pops up on your phone with Vincent.

• 19:12Kate Lister?

  He seems very intense.

• 19:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, this will take me two hours on the phone.

• 19:16Kate Lister?

  Yes, yes. Yeah, exactly that, of like, oh god, he's phoning again.

• 19:19Speaker 04

  He would go on discussing, and that's also in the relation, I mean, in the end, his greatest friend and the greatest relation that he maintained was that with his brother, his younger brother, Theo.

• 19:28Kate Lister?

  And he really loved him, didn't he? They loved each other.

• 19:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely. And it's not always like happy times. I mean, it's, it's in, in also there were also serious depressions in their relationship as well. But in the end, they really cling to each other and they're together, they are one. And what he was looking for, a woman, together they are one. In fact, he had it with his brother.

• 19:51Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with Tyo after this short break.

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• 21:02Kate Lister?

  He doesn't seem to take rejection very well. Does Vincent, from, from what I know of him, is he, I mean, nobody does, nobody likes being dumped or told no or anything like that, but he seems to take it particularly hard. Would you say that that's true?

• 21:20Speaker 04

  Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Well, the, the first love, like Caroline, for instance, okay, but like when he was more than when he was fired from Coopie, well, probably didn't care so much because he wanted to do something in the church. But his rejection with women, the most serious one is the one that he got in eighty eighty one, when he was just beginning as an artist and was living with his parents in, in, in Brabant. And that summer in eighty eighty one, his cousin of his came by, whose husband had recently died and who was widowed, and she had a son. And he fell in love with her madly and she didn't want to have anything to do with him. So it was categorically, as he said,

• 22:00Speaker 04

  no, never, ever. It was like that. But he was harassing her more or less, you might say, for, for over two months, writing very, very long letters also, and also to his brother and to other people, very, I mean, as long as letters are from this period, trying to how he has to get her to fall her emotions in the sense that in the end it was meant itself for that she lived in Amsterdam, she went back to Amsterdam, that he went to Amsterdam and visited the family and more or less embarked on them, just at dinnertime. And they opened the door and said, is Kay, Kay was her name, is Kay in? And they said, no, she's not in. And then he entered the room and he saw that one spot of the table was empty, that she had just left, didn't want to meet him. So he knew she was there.

• 22:45Speaker 04

  And what he done did is quite exceptional. He put his hand in the candle, in the burning candle.

• 22:49Kate Lister?

  Vincent.

• 22:50Speaker 04

  Vincent, and he said, I only want to see her for as long as I can hold my hand in the candle.

• 22:55Kate Lister?

  And that didn't work. That didn't work.

• 22:58Speaker 04

  No, that didn't work. He took his hand out of the candle. They bandaged him, they took care of him and he slept in a small hotel and they escorted him back to the hotel.

• 23:06Kate Lister?

  Very intense.

• 23:07Speaker 04

  But that same evening, he went to a prostitute.

• 23:10Kate Lister?

  Let's talk about that because Vincent, his attitude, his relationships with women is fascinating because he he will put them on a pedestal and he will become obsessive and devote and do this. I'm going to put my hand in a candle, all of this stuff. But he regularly visited brothels and sex workers. And one of his most influential muses, I am going to get this name horribly, horribly wrong. Cyn Hornick?

• 23:38Speaker 04

  Cyn Hornick, yeah.

• 23:39Kate Lister?

  Cyn Hornick, yeah. Can you talk a little bit about her, who she was and how he viewed sex workers? Because I think this is, this is quite fascinating.

• 23:48Speaker 04

  Even already in The Hague, when he was at the Kuppil Gallery, he would sometimes visit the sex workers and to get some relief as they go. It is, yeah, something you have to see it in the perspective as they did in the 19th century. As a, if a man couldn't get enough satisfaction, man, some of his libido, so she went to a brothel. So to relieve yourself in a certain way, as it was called, a hygienic solution.

• 24:08Kate Lister?

  They, they discuss it almost like they're going to the gym, don't they? Almost like, oh, I'll just nip down to the brothel.

• 24:14Speaker 04

  Exactly. But I was kind of, I remember from Italy, for instance, that when a young boy is about 15, 16 years old, his father takes him to a brothel. That's a bit weird. It was there and they made use of it, via as well. And the thing is, is that when he was to Amsterdam, when he went to visit Kay, it didn't work out. Then he went to The Hague, immediately afterwards, and he never really returned home. So he moved to The Hague to start his career and he had his cousin by marriage, Antonov, who was an artist and a renowned artist at the time, who taught him a little bit, the first things about painting and helped him along a little in his drawing. And then quite early on in 1982, he ran into a scene who he only introduced in letters, not immediately, although he mentioned that he got a new model. Then in the end, his model appeared to be seen.

• 24:57Speaker 04

  What I always have found very fascinating is that at first, he doesn't call her Cyn. He calls her Christine. And Christine is a more typical, probably was that her alias? I mean, it was probably her working name. And he only maybe only later found out what his real name was because her real name was Klasina and Cyn is short for Klasina. But Christine might very well have been her working name, but she probably also wasn't quite sure what she had with this. And she started as a model and in fact, she was temporary out of sex work because she was pregnant. For him, and a very important aspect of taking care of, when it was taking care of her, was saving her. Was in the fact is that a woman, and that's partly influenced by what you've heard about Michela, a woman should never be abandoned, should never be left alone.

• 25:43Speaker 04

  She should be taken careful, especially when she's in great misery. At that time, his life was very difficult as well, I mean, having not much money and trying to work out as an artist. He referred to it as the ground floor of life. I mean, it's like, it's the lowest of the lowest, it's the, the base, you might say. And with scene, he saw something as, okay, someone to be saved, someone that he could love, so he wasn't quite sure whether he loved her, but he, in the end, he did. We're pretty sure that he had some special feelings for her, but very much related to that in the idea of indeed saving her and taking care of her. And he did in a very nice way, and it's in a way that they lived together, I mean, in, in the apartment he had. She had to go to hospital to deliver the baby. And when she came back, she moved in with him and he had a slightly larger, larger apartment he could arrange next door.

• 26:29Speaker 04

  And they lived there for well over a year together. And of course, in those days, you should not live together with unmarried, with a woman who had two children in, in this respect. So everybody around him was looking as, as, was taking his hands off him. And was making comments, this is something that you don't do. And in a way, quite rightfully, I believe, is that he was very much opposed to that. And how can you not take care of someone? I mean, he has these feelings to help this woman. But it was an agreement also that the parents obviously didn't like it. Theo disapproved of it. And they made an arrangement that he didn't write about it anymore. And it's very typical because up to this summer, you might say, he talks about, sometimes he refers to her as the woman or scene.

• 27:09Speaker 04

  And they would go into the dunes and they would have a picnic there and things like that. But then from some moment on, he doesn't mention her anymore. But they still live together. So not to affront, as if she's not there in the weird.

• 27:20Kate Lister?

  We just won't mention it.

• 27:22Speaker 04

  Just, just don't mention it, yeah.

• 27:24Kate Lister?

  Were they lovers, Vincent and scene?

• 27:26Speaker 04

  Yes, there must have been, absolutely, afterwards. It is also his first possibility and attempt to get a nude model. There's always been, Vincent, at several points, to study figure and to study figure painting. In his heart, he wanted to be a portrait painter and a figure painter. So not so much knowing for his landscapes, but he really wanted to be a figure. And there are several times that he tries to do it. And one of the ways, of course, to learn how to paint and draw the figures is to do nude drawing. I mean, it's from the academy, everybody practices it. But it was always very difficult for him to get people available to pose for him in the nude. He often complained about this, but the scene he had a model. Though we do not have many of these studies, we know that he made several nude studies of her.

• 28:09Speaker 04

  But we have a very famous one, which is a drawing called, which he made a lifograph of, it's called Sorrow. And that's her pregnant and naked, in silhouette, sitting and having her hands over her head in deep sorrow. It's a very touching and very moving drawing. He made a drawing, he made a second drawing of it, and he wrote a little caption underneath it, which he took from Michel, which is exactly from, a woman should never be left alone, abandoned. And that's what he tried to do in his own life in this case. I mean, what he saw is that if you really wanted to be a true success in life, you had to have a family, someone to take care of, you had to have children. Well, these children were not his own children, but he took care of the children. And the best thing would be that you also have a successful professional life, that the two work together.

• 28:55Speaker 04

  Well, in the end, it appeared is that art, you might say, took over that other kind of life. He's always been finding, all those ten years, you might say, that he was active as an artist, also for some kind of family life.

• 29:08Kate Lister?

  Why didn't they get married? I mean, they lived together for a year. I don't know if we have anything from scene that, like, in her own voice, any letters from her or anything to give us a perspective of what she thought of this very intense man trying to save her and, and nothing at all.

• 29:24Speaker 04

  There are no letters. They tried to get some contact around nineteen hundred, when she was still alive. In the end, she took her own life.

• 29:30Kate Lister?

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 29:31Speaker 04

  Yes, she drowned herself, and I think it was nineteen four, nineteen five, in Antwerp. She moved from from the from the Hague, it was to Rotterdam and then in the end it appears that it was impossible for her to get out of the environment that she was in. And Vincent felt in eighty eighty three, so at the point before he would go away, the relationship got a bit more tense and he felt that other people were trying to get her away from him. And he said, well, but when I leave her, she will go back to her old profession. And he didn't want that, but in the end it was it was simply impossible to stay together. So the idea of marriage, well, as I said, so he didn't write about it anymore.

• 30:09Kate Lister?

  Yes.

• 30:09Speaker 04

  We don't know.

• 30:10Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 30:10Speaker 04

  But probably it would have been very, very difficult. The family, for instance, the father, for him, it was also like it was in a sense very immoral because it was also two different classes. He was a middle class son, she was, of course, lower class. They were always thinking about.

• 30:25Kate Lister?

  They were never going to sign off on that.

• 30:26Speaker 04

  No, it's always like they were so much aware of the people around him and how they would look at the family. And that's and that's something that Vincent really haters. I mean, it's my life and I can do what I want. I'm not taking that all into consideration. I mean, it's what I want. And and that makes him always this problem with his family, especially his parents.

• 30:46Kate Lister?

  God, they must have been tearing their hair out of Vincent's. But he.

• 30:50Speaker 04

  Oh, yes, there were a lot of worries.

• 30:53Kate Lister?

  So we said that he's very intense. He writes these epic letters, but in the letters that he's writing, you do kind of get like little bits and pieces of, he wasn't writing to his family about his sex life, but I understand he wrote to friends about it and he was quite open and forthright with it, with that kind of, I guess, that that Dutch honesty that you're very famous for.

• 31:17Speaker 04

  Well, up to a certain point, I mean, he is sometimes very open hearted to his brother. But if it's really getting saucy, you might say, is then, well, we talk about it when I see you next week. So sometimes a bit of it. But in fact, when it was in the south of France, there was no opportunity to meet each other. So it's a bit more into the open and maybe not so much to feel, but more to Emile Bernard, so his colleague in in Paris, who was younger, who had his own problem with with relationships and and women as a young adult. And Vincent is most openly about sex, you might say, and and sex workers and and brothels and things in letters with Emily Bernard. And Bernard also, we had in this very nice exhibition, just just on, I sent Vincent

• 31:59Speaker 04

  a whole series of drawings that he had made surrounding around the theme of the brothel. Which of course was also for artists, a new subject, the attention for artists to pay attention to this part of life, of the lower life, you might say, of the harsh life and of the, yeah, the hard life, like to lose the protected in the process as well. And what society was like was a serious topic within modern art.

• 32:22Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 32:22Speaker 04

  And Vincent Nelson did paint some nudes when he was in in in Paris. He only painted three nudes, we only know three, and we know a couple of sketches. There was one of a copulating couple even.

• 32:33Kate Lister?

  I didn't know that.

• 32:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's it's very unknown. It's in our collection. It's we will be described in in our collection catalogue of the

• 32:42Kate Lister?

  Wow.

• 32:43Speaker 04

  Paris period. But there was one sex work cleaning herself, so like the guy would do over a small tin bath.

• 32:49Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 32:50Speaker 04

  And there is one of a copulating couple, which you don't see very often, which is very, I mean, it's something not meant for for public, some something private. But which is, I always keep in mind, is that Vincent was, one of his major examples in art was Rembrandt. And Rembrandt made beautiful etchings and drawings, and between his etching, there was also a very, very beautiful etching of a copulating couple in bed. It's very intimate. It's like you're peeping through the bed.

• 33:14Kate Lister?

  Yes, I remember that now.

• 33:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 33:17Kate Lister?

  Yes, he does.

• 33:19Speaker 04

  You don't see it often in art.

• 33:20Kate Lister?

  No.

• 33:22Speaker 04

  No, but this and and this must have been in his mind as a as a subject, not for something to make a serious drawing to sell, obviously, but

• 33:29Kate Lister?

  Like a private thing.

• 33:30Speaker 04

  Like a private thing, yeah, and lots of these.

• 33:32Kate Lister?

  Fascinating.

• 33:33Speaker 04

  And especially in prints, you find, well, rottig prints in the nineteenth century, which were sold not openly, but you could always get the hang of that, where people collecting them. There's also this sense of mystery, of course, and and secret, the secretiveness around it. So it's more in that category, you might say.

• 33:48Kate Lister?

  We have got to talk about the most famous incident that people know about Van Gogh's life, and probably the one that as as a researcher, Van Gogh, you're like, really? We have to talk about this one again? The ear, because that that sex work is in that story too. Like the story that that we that is commonly relayed is that he cut his ear off and he went to a local brothel and he gave it to a woman that was working there. And Goghan was there too.

• 34:15Speaker 04

  And Goghan was there. Well, Goghan was, I don't know, out of sight, well, Goghan was in Arles, obviously.

• 34:20Kate Lister?

  I don't like Goghan. He seems like a real shit to me. But even I would have to concede that Vincent was quite, that he might have had a point when he said that Vincent was too much for him to handle.

• 34:32Speaker 04

  Well, the thing that Goghan came to to Arles on the idea that he was going to some kind of pupil. I mean, you must realise is that when they only met very briefly in Paris, because Goghan was away all the time. It was in Brittany or in Martinique. And he came back from Martinique in November eighty seven. And Vincent had stationed a small exhibition of his own work in a Toulouse-Lautrec in the Milbenar. Goghan visited and then they got into contact. But then already in February next year, Vincent was gone and Goghan would go back to Brittany. So there was only a brief that they met. But for Vincent, discovering the work that he brought back from Martinique, these tropical works that he loved very much. He was saying, OK, this is the man who is one of the most important around the world.

• 35:15Speaker 04

  He has seen those places where no one hardly ever comes, but maybe the future of art where everything is colourful and nice and bright. And he was influenced by Japanese prints, for instance, and he was looking for these bright works in a bright society. And if you had the possibility, would have gone to Indonesia, maybe even Japan, but the South France was the closest he could get, you might say, to such a such an area. And then he wanted obviously Goghan to come. And finally, when he had his studio all to himself, that he also could live there, he tried to persuade again, very persistently. And when you read letters, it's really like that Goghan is holding it off a little bit in the sense of I've got no money, I feel ill, things like that. But then Theo sold one of his paintings, so and he had money, so he had no longer that excuse. So he did come.

• 35:59Speaker 04

  And for the idea to stay there for a year and to work together in this little yellow house and the idea that he was going to teach someone and then someone he's going to work with. Which is very telling, I was what is that? One of the first letters that Goghan wrote back when he was in Arles to his friend Schufenek. Is that all I'm here with Vincent, if it's going all right, I was here as some kind of a teacher. But he's criticizing everything I make.

• 36:23Kate Lister?

  Oh, no.

• 36:25Speaker 04

  And it's quite clear that it was a very intense two months. And a lot of discussion about art and it also appears that they don't like the same artists. And they tried to make up of going together for a day to Montpellier, to a museum, to look at art and discuss things and try to get together. But in the end, it simply blows. And Vincent, what he does see at that moment is that his dream of working together, of creating a space for him and other artists, but they can work together. Not that they had to be all together at the same time, but that there was a space in the south of France, but in Brittany and other places. But people with the same ideas could work together was endangered.

• 37:04Kate Lister?

  Because Vincent really believed, didn't he, that he would get Gauguin there? And then together, they would forge this creative movement that would take over the world. And Gauguin's turned up thinking, oh, all right, I'll go and do a bit of teaching.

• 37:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, but it's it's a bit like that. But also in the same time, Gauguin also very much respecting what Vincent is doing. It's a reflection in a sense of that both know from each other that they have something to say in art. And it's very different. The main difference between the two is that, and that's the criticism of Gauguin on Vincent. And that's the reason why Vincent wanted Gauguin to come over, is that he wanted to learn better to paint by heart for memory. Vincent is an artist who is always very much in the realist tradition, but very much dependent of the motive in front of him. But one of the highest thing in art is that you can also sit in your studio and compose a painting just with the sketches that you have, just creating something in your mind. And Gauguin was much more of an artist like that.

• 38:03Speaker 04

  So he would sketch in nature, but then he would go back to the studio and then make his paintings. He hardly ever painted in that sense outside life, you might say. Effort and motive. And Vincent did try his hand at some of works at that time from memory, but those are not really his best works. I mean, it's it's quite telling that if he doesn't have a model, and if he doesn't have the motive in front of him, he is more or less lost. And that's the reason why he came so late in art, only at twenty seven, because he had been drawing all the time before that. But there was no idea that he would ever turn it to in kind of profession, because he realized that his drawing was not very good. It is only that he learned something about when he, well, when Finfia more or less suggested for him, because after so many things went wrong, he was even a preacher in in in the mining workers district in in in Belgium.

• 38:48Speaker 04

  He tried to to become a minister of the church and things, and that all failed. And he had this horrible year of not knowing what to do. And then this brother said, well, you always have art in your head. You always talk about art. Why don't you become an artist, a drawer, an illustrator or something for magazines? He never really thought about it, because his drawing was no good. But then he said, okay, then I try my hand at that. And then like the other things, he goes through it all the way. And it's drawing, drawing, drawing. But he realized indeed is that he needed tools to get a grip on world around him. Because if he would paint a church or whatever, or a landscape just by heart, he had no really idea of what's closer by, what's further away.

• 39:25Kate Lister?

  Perspective.

• 39:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, perspective. So he had all these kinds of equipments that would help him with that. He would square and he would look through through the grid to get the right proportions and then work from it. And he used that grid for a very, very long time. And with that, he could get a grip on nature. And he learned, obviously learned, and then after what he could do without the grid. But then the shaky feeling for perspective come back, but then he becomes an expressive force. And it becomes something which is undeniable, is a part of what makes Vincent's work so unique. So it's it's never a photograph, although you can recognize all kinds of things within the where it is. And you can see details in church and in background, things like that. But he plays with it. I mean, what is in front of him is to be entangled uh onto painting, what he has to have in front of him.

• 40:11Speaker 04

  And that's where it went wrong with Gauguin, and you might say, and at some point he felt threatened that he drank too much. And at some point, Gauguin felt threatened by Vincent's uh rages, probably.

• 40:22Kate Lister?

  Didn't Gauguin say that he would wake up in the middle of the night and Vincent was just standing there looking at him? That would freak anybody out.

• 40:30Speaker 04

  Exactly. That was the reason that he decided not to stay in the Yellow House anymore, but he went to a hotel in the city. And that evening, Vincent cut off his ear. And indeed, went to the brothel they usually go into every two weeks. And presented to one of the sex workers, um, girl Rachel, which is the working name. And of course, she fainted and he went back to the other house and he was found the next morning. And he was brought to hospital and he was unconscious because he lost a lot of blood, but they even, they also retrieved the ear. And at some point, we know the doctor, Dr. Ray, who treated him in, in the hospital. Looked at the possibility of perhaps sewing the ear back on. But it was too long. I mean, it was too long. The separation was been too long.

• 41:14Speaker 04

  And he even said later that he had the ear uh on alcohol on his desk for quite some time.

• 41:21Kate Lister?

  Oh, wow.

• 41:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, that it's, it's a bit, bit of a silly story, but uh you get all kinds of weird anecdotes when you, when you.

• 41:29Kate Lister?

  Why? I know that, that we'll never know the answer to this because you would need Vincent here. The, the, why the ear? I mean, from what you've been saying, he does have a history of self-harm. The putting your hand in a candle for dramatic effect is quite worrying. Why the ear and why the, I mean, maybe it was just, he was in a mania, it wasn't making sense, but why did he do that?

• 41:51Speaker 04

  I think you can compare it with the, the idea of the hand in the candle. And what he also did when he was in Amsterdam and when he was working, trying to become a minister of the church. That he had to learn algebra and Latin and things like that. He didn't do his lessons and he would flog himself. And he would, it's like Franciscan would do, or he would lock himself out of his house so he couldn't get back in. And spend a night in, in the wintry cold to, to, to punish himself. So this, uh, when you, when you're in some kind of intense mental pain. You inflict some physical pain to relieve in, in that, that pain and that anxiety that you have. And then cutting off um an ear, a nose or whatever, a finger or cutting yourself generally is a way to.

• 42:33Speaker 04

  Find some kind of relief in this. So it, it must be explained, that kind of thing. It's been explained all kinds of ways in the sense that, uh, also that other, that the Gauguin chopped it off with one of his swords, which is quite hilarious.

• 42:44Kate Lister?

  I heard that he'd, he'd visited a bullfight in Spain where they cut the ear off or something like that.

• 42:49Speaker 04

  They visited in Arles with bullfights.

• 42:52Kate Lister?

  Oh, right, in France.

• 42:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, in Arles, but it didn't kind of, yes, I mean, it was because there was the provincial bullfights and they had these, people had to get roses or things and flowers from the horns of the bull, but the bull was not killed. But obviously he knew from bullfights that indeed the ear is cut off and you present the ear to the beautiful lady in the audience. So it looks like this symbolic cheer of presenting your ear. It's the thing that he said with, here's something to remember me by.

• 43:17Kate Lister?

  To the woman from the brothel?

• 43:18Speaker 04

  To the woman, yeah, in the brothel.

• 43:20Kate Lister?

  Wow.

• 43:21Speaker 04

  Then probably one of the women he knew, then probably, and maybe who have made fun of him or whatever, or that she didn't see him and then, and that he wanted her and that he gave her something, well, she probably will have remembered for the rest of her

• 43:32Kate Lister?

  She'll remember that, won't she?

• 43:34Speaker 04

  Remember that. So it's, it's in that, you might say, but it's only that he had no full recollection of what he had done.

• 43:41Kate Lister?

  No, it doesn't sound like he was well.

• 43:43Speaker 04

  No, and of course Bunny was hospitalized and he got his psychosis slightly afterwards. Is that his memory, there is a, it's a bit between two things. He didn't want to talk about it anymore and write about it anymore and he didn't remember much of it anymore.

• 44:00Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with Tayo after this short break.

• 44:12Kate Lister?

  Hello, Betwixters. I am jumping in here because I have some very exciting news. Betwixt the Sheets has set up camp on YouTube. That's right, it took us a while, but we are there now. So if you are the kind of person who likes to see your podcasts as well as hear your podcasts, you can now go and find us right there and the link is in the show notes. And please remember to like and subscribe because the people in charge of the money really do like that. Right, let's get on with it.

• 44:53Kate Lister?

  I'm gonna continue along the rather grim theme here because I have only just recently learnt that there is some debate around whether or not he did shoot himself, or whether somebody else shot him, or whether it was an accident. I was just wondering what your take was on that, because until recently I'd never heard that. I thought that it was just, he did it to himself.

• 45:13Speaker 04

  It's something that started with the biography, which was published in 2011, I believe, of Nye Finn Smith, a new biography, and they had an appendix in the back of the book as the possibility that Vincent did not took his own life, but was shot by two young boys, one or two young boys, accidentally or purposely, in Auvers-sur-Vallée. But this is a new myth, you might say.

• 45:35Kate Lister?

  Yeah, it's not true.

• 45:36Speaker 04

  It's not true. It is quite clear from Vincent, as I discussed in the beginning, is that, well, once he cut off his ear and got into this crisis, I mean, the idea of suicide was lurking on him. It's even shortly before he went into hospital in Saint-Rémy's, I mean, he voluntarily hospitalized himself for a year in a mental institution. I mean, thinking about it only, because he was not mad. He had this crisis and he could think about this crisis. But you read these letters from Saint-Rémy, I mean, it's incredible how he thinks about his own personal melancholic situation.

• 46:11Kate Lister?

  He has insight into it.

• 46:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, and how he finds his anxieties and tries to get out of there. But one thing is, of course, is what is playing in his mind is, yeah, one solution is taking your own life. He writes to Theo when he goes to the hospital, he says, "Well, if it wasn't for you, I'd probably turn to suicide, but I'm probably too coward to do it. But together we are a bulwark against society. I mean, together we can go on." And what's going on in the other, so then we have this whole series that he is, well, trying to get back his grip on life in the asylum, where he has this major crisis in the summer, but he has another one at the end, and also realising, "I'm not gonna get better here, so I'd better leave, because this doesn't work." And in the end, so he's trying to look for somewhere

• 46:56Speaker 04

  else, and Theo, in the meantime, found a place for him in Auvers-sur-Vallée. So it's not good for him to go back to Paris, because it's too busy, I mean, there's too much going around. He needs quiet, to work in quiet. And he finds this place in Auvers-Houaz, which Camille Pissaro, who was living a bit far away, emphasized that Auver, because there was a doctor, Dr. Cauchy, who might take, keep an eye on him. And he was a patron of the art, you might say, he was an amateur artist himself, he was an etcher. He was etching and he knew Pissaro very well, and so that was okay. So he went to Auvers-Houaz and it was more just taken care of. Yeah, but in the meantime, in those pastime, Theo went married. Theo had something that Vincent never realized, that was a family.

• 47:37Speaker 04

  I mean, having met a woman immensely in love, two as one, as Vincent always wanted. And they had this baby, Vincent Willem, was named after him, was born in January eighteen ninety. And Vincent met his nephew when he came to Paris, when he was from Seremy Paris and went to Auver. He first saw the wife of Theo, Jo Foch, Jo Bonger, and the little nephew. And then he went to Auvers-Houaz. But what he also realized is that the bond the two brothers had, there was somebody new there. There was a wife as well and a boy, there was a family. And Vincent loved that, I mean, that was good for his brother, but it also changed his situation a little bit. Because before that, it was them together.

• 48:19Speaker 04

  And he realized when he was in Auvers-Houaz, there was a point after a month when he was there. He was thinking also, looking for something permanent to stay, he was staying in a cafe, but something permanent that, maybe something permanent that Theo and his wife could also use in the summer to stay there. Because, I mean, the city is bad to grow up for a little boy and have boss to be in the countryside. But Theo at some point had his own problems that appeared. And in July, this is the month that Vincent took his love, in the beginning of July, there was a serious crisis in the relationship because Theo was thinking about leaving the art gallery where he is working. Start because he didn't like his bosses anymore because they were keeping him short. And he was overreacting a little bit, but he gave an ultimatum to his bosses in the sense

• 49:04Speaker 04

  that if I don't get a raise, I will quit the building and I start my own business. And so it was discussed with Yo and Vincent, and Vincent and Yo were clearly opposed to this, but Theo, in a way, as being a fangirl, I mean, was just as stubborn sometimes as his brother could be and their father could be for that matter, he pushed through. So he did give an ultimatum to his bosses. In the end, Vincent went back to Ove Ove Suwazan and really came in a very melancholic mood. That's when he painted The Weedfield with Crows. He made three big paintings to, in the against to get back on his feet again. And he wrote afterwards that the brushes were almost falling from his hands, from emotion when he was painting them. And he made three paintings, which is interesting to look at, because they say something, and that's when his personal life says something

• 49:48Speaker 04

  about what his artwork is. So he realizes, of course, that an artwork is not an illustration of an artist's personal life. I mean, it has to do its way on its own in the world, but it has to reflect the emotions that the artist put into it, which resonates with people looking at it. When the resonance is right, that's something the artist did. But of course, there was The Weedfield with Crows, which is very dramatic. These crows, I mean, it's anxiety, it's fear. And then he painted another, the very wide landscape of thunder clouds going away and the sun is breaking through. So it's a very peaceful landscape, you might say, so with the thunderstorms going away, because nature itself is also healthy. And it's something that consoles you as well, consolation as well. And then

• 50:31Speaker 04

  he made a third painting, and that's remarkable, because that third painting, also in a very wide format, was the house of Chère Daubigny, another painter, a French painter, a very successful painter from the earlier generation, who had died in seventy six, but who lived in Ove. And the widow of Daubigny was still living in that house. And that painting of the house of Daubigny with a cat in the yard and the widow of Daubigny itself, that was what an artistic life really should be. One with the countryside, being an artist and have a family and raise a family there. And that's what Daubigny succeeded in doing that. So it's that sequence of terror in The Weedfield with Crows of, well, nature's

• 51:16Speaker 04

  consoling and in the end, and this is what it should be. It's almost a triptych in the sense of, but it's also a realization that he would never have this. And in the end, Theo, who gave in and did not quit the job and stayed working at the firm. He never wrote this to Vincent. It was a time of emotional things because the young boy was born who had not, they had not been to Holland. They had only holiday in the summer, so they were going to Holland. Vincent was hoping that, that, that fear would come to him again and they would visit him. And fear never did, and his mind was somewhere else, was with his family. And went to Holland and Vincent felt alone and he never wrote to Vincent that he did stay to his job. So the last letter that Vincent wrote actually begins with, I don't know what the gentleman said to you. So clearly not knowing what was going on.

• 52:00Speaker 04

  And well, that's the last thing we know. And, and it was at a point indeed that he, he, he could also not have done it. That's, that's the thing. Well, we had an exhibition and, and we wrote a book about this in, in, in two thousand and sixteen on, on the virtue of insanity. Where we really focused as a reaction on a murder fear, theory is that we, so we went back to the sources. Okay, what exactly did happen? And to, to spell it out, you might say. And it's quite clear that he was going in a downward spiral uh in, in a certain way. And then there is this moment that you decide that you're going to do it. And even when we talked about experts in suicides and they say, yeah. I mean, in the end, it was also possible he didn't do it. And, but he did it.

• 52:43Kate Lister?

  He did it.

• 52:44Speaker 04

  He did it and he shot himself, he meant to shoot himself in the heart. The bullets ricocheted on the rib. It was located close to her rib, but it was a small caliber gun. And so it didn't kill him immediately. And he, he managed to walk back. We, we did it in the fields nowhere. Yeah, he walked back to the, to the end where he was staying. But I always thought one of the most tragic things is that when Emil Bernard wrote very shortly afterwards, because he was, he was at the funeral, funeral at the time. And then when he heard from Dr. Kasher, is that when Kasher tried to help him, he said, I will do everything to help you. And then Vincent reportedly have said is that, but then I'll have to do it all over again.

• 53:25Kate Lister?

  Oh.

• 53:26Speaker 04

  So it is quite clear that, that so that he was in a way, sadly enough, he was, he was. It was the only solution he saw is that he uh to be no longer a burden to anyone, you might say.

• 53:39Kate Lister?

  So it was a really tragic, but as a final question to you. I want you to imagine that the Van Gogh Museum where you work has caught fire and it's terrible, it's burned into the ground and you have enough time to get in there and get one item from your collection to help the world remember who this man was. What are you gonna go for? Is it a painting? Is it a letter? Is it what? What would you go for?

• 54:08Speaker 04

  This is a possible question. I mean,

• 54:10Kate Lister?

  I know.

• 54:11Speaker 04

  Well, the thing is that people are usually also always asking, what's your favourite painting? And that usually tends to shift a little bit. But one which has always been very, very dear to me from the beginning, which I only, even before I studied Van Gogh intensely. And at that moment, when I met, when working to Van Gogh, it was always on loan to the museum next door, the Staling Museum. It's a painting we have studied afterwards intensely, it's from our own collection, obviously. And it is his last painting. And it is the painting that has to do with his suicide and with his death. And that's a painting of tree roots. It's a, it's a close up. He painted it the morning that he killed

• 54:50Speaker 04

  himself. And we know that he had on his body, in his pocket, he had a letter. It was not a real letter to Fear, but it was a concept of a letter that Vincent sent to Fear. And the concept of the letter was slightly even more personal to Fear himself. And he put it in his pocket, obviously, so that he knew that Fear would find it when he was dead. So there was not lying around somewhere, but it was some kind of message from, for afterlife, which is also that the suicide was planned in that respect. Even then, it could not happen. And then nobody knew about this, but that's what we know about it. And the painting, in a way, is perhaps a painted adieu. Because what we see is a close up

• 55:31Speaker 04

  of tree roots, bare tree roots in a chalky ground, getting loose, erosion going on, it's clinging to life. It's, I mean, it's the forces of nature and nature trying to survive. And sometimes you have to give in. And that's the last painting he made. So that has a special connection. It's impossible to choose one and it's always in the top of the museum. So, I mean, if you have got all the way to the top to save that one would be difficult. And there is another one I would like to say, but it's not in our collection. But if, if, if some kind of disaster would happen. And that's a painting that we discovered in, in two thousand and thirteen. A painting from the Arles period, which was unknown till then. And which came to us for authentication and which was presented to us.

• 56:16Speaker 04

  This is, this is Van Gogh. And it turned out to be a real Van Gogh. It's a sunset at Montmartre. It's, it's a landscape painting that he did in, in Arles. It's perhaps not the most famous painting because it's, it's only known since the last ten, ten, fifteen years. But the discovery was quite incredible because we, we thought a painting like that would not be out there still. I mean, we know so much about him. So, and it is a very insightful painting. Uh, art historically, in the sense that it is one of the first paintings with very heavy impasto that he did outdoors. So there are, there are areas which are, well, quite okay, but there are areas which are not so okay. And he even wrote about the painting in his letters. So that's a painting, if that was ever endangered, I would love to save.

• 56:54Kate Lister?

  That's the one. Oh, Ty, you have been so wonderful to talk to. Thank you so much. And if people want to know more about you and your work and Van Gogh's work as well, where can they find you?

• 57:06Speaker 04

  Take a photo at the, at the Van Gogh Museum. Obviously, I'm, but there's a senior researcher. Come to our museum, see the works. We have this year a wonderful exhibition at the end of the year on, on Roulin, which the, you probably, probably familiar with the, the postman Roulin. That he painted a portrait. Well, we're gonna have an exhibition which we make together with, with Boston, uh, Museum of Fine Arts on the Roulin family. So what we tried to do is get as many of the, all the, all the portraits that he did together. It's never been done. So first in Boston in March and, and in the end it's called Foch and the Roulins, together again at last. And in the fall it will be in Amsterdam for people coming out from England. It will be perhaps a little bit cheaper to come over to Amsterdam instead of Boston.

• 57:48Kate Lister?

  Amazing. Thank you so much for coming to talk to us today. You've been marvelous.

• 57:53Speaker 04

  Thank you. Bye bye.

• 57:56Kate Lister?

  Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Ty O for joining me. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like, review and follow along wherever it is you get your podcasts. Coming up, we have got episodes on the sex lives of medieval royals and the truth about Roald Dahl, all coming your way. And if you would like us to explore a subject or if you just wanted to say hello, or perhaps send us some Van Gogh paintings, then you can do so at [email protected]. This podcast was edited by Tim Arstall and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again on Betwixt the Sheet, the history of sex, scandal and society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.

• 58:43Speaker 01

  In Our Time is a world-class seminar every week. Why was Jeremy a lonely snail? What were lines doing in York in the third century? I'm Misha Glennie and every week I'm joined by expert guests to explore the ideas that shape our world.

• 58:58Speaker 02

  It's one of the first times really that you consistently see someone painting teeth. I know that sounds bonkers.

• 59:02Speaker 03

  If I was going to define mathematics, I would say it's the study of structure.

• 59:06Speaker 01

  In Our Time, listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Tea or coffee? Love a cup of tea.