Vincent van Gogh: Disaster in Arles (Part 3)

What led to Vincent van Gogh's breakdown in December 1888? What role did Paul Gauguin play in Vincent's mental health crisis? And just how much of his ear did Vincent cut off? Join Alastair and James as Stories of Art transforms into a true crime podcast and delivers a blow-by-blow account of one of the most infamous events in the history of art. Follow Stories of Art on Instagram: @storiesofart.heni If you want to see the artworks discussed in this episode you can switch on video in your podcast app at any time. Artworks in this episode: Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh Painting Sunflowers, 1888, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam Vincent van Gogh, Self-portrait dedicated to Paul Gauguin, 1888, Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Harvard Vincent van Gogh, The Yellow House, 1888, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam Vincent van Gogh, The Bedroom, 1888, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam Paul Gauguin, Portrait of Mette Gauguin, 1877, Courtauld Institute of Art, London Paul Gauguin, Vision after the Sermon (Jacob Wrestling with the Angel), 1888, Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh Vincent van Gogh, Sunflowers, 1888, The National Gallery, London Vincent van Gogh, Van Gogh's Chair, 1888, The National Gallery, London Vincent van Gogh, Gauguin's Chair, 1888, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam For more great art content visit www.heni.com or visit the Heni Talks YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/@HENITalks Hosts: Alastair Sooke and Dr James Fox Additional Research: Catherine Ingram Producer and Editor: Ben Harding Executive Producer: Emma Cahusac

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stories of Art. I am Alastair Sooke.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  And I'm James Fox.

• 0:10Speaker 00

  A bearded artist, dressed in a distinctive mustard-coloured coat, is sitting in a studio while painting a vase of sunflowers. If we're honest, he doesn't really look very happy about it, even though sunflowers, as we discovered in the last episode, are his most famous motif. His face appears strange, ashen, even monkey-like. His eyes are half-closed, and gently, his right hand, holding a very dainty brush, seems to reach out and touch a wilting petal of the biggest yellow bloom, the disc of which, in a really peculiar touch, seems to stare straight at the viewer like the eye of a cyclops. So look, James, I wanted to begin this episode ever so slightly differently.

• 0:55Speaker 00

  Not with a painting by Vincent van Gogh, as you might expect, but with a portrait of him by somebody else. The French painter Paul Gauguin, with whom, very notoriously, Vincent lived for nine tense and electrifying weeks in Arles, in the south of France, towards the end of 1888. And I think it really gets the heart of much of what we're going to talk about today. Now, I'd love to hear what you make of it. Just before throwing to you, I wanted to preface that by saying what Vincent, and indeed Theo, both made of this portrait. I think it's a really fascinating picture. So, nine months later, this is what Vincent says to Theo, to his brother. He's writing about this portrait by Gauguin.

• 1:37Speaker 00

  He says, "My face has lit up, after all, a lot since. But it was, indeed, me, extremely tired and charged with electricity, as I was then." And Theo even describes this as the best portrait of Vincent. And Vincent, there were portraits of him by other, really quite well-established artists, including Toulouse Lautrec, Australian impressionist John Russell. So, in a sense, they're saying it's quite good. What do you make of it as a likeness?

• 2:09Speaker 01

  I'm gripped by this painting. I've always been gripped by this painting. I think it's one of Gauguin's best. It's so complex visually. It's also, in my view, exceptionally cruel. I think this is, you know, one of the great put-downs in the history of art. I think there's a real criticism of Van Gogh. Let me tell you why. First of all, you've alluded to this. The way he portrays Vincent, with this strange pose, these little squinting eyes, this big brow, these big lips. He is, you're right, he's painting like a chimpanzee painting.

• 2:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:40Speaker 01

  It's really, really insulting. The other thing that's very insulting about this picture, and isn't mentioned so often, is Vincent's thumb. The little thumb, which rises from the palate, out of the groin, like a little erect penis.

• 2:54Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:54Speaker 01

  Because, and the reason it's cruel, is that Vincent, whose mental and physical health had been declining in this period, he was struggling with impotence. And Gauguin knew this very well. They were going to brothels all the time. Gauguin knew it really upset Vincent. And here he is, I think, ridiculing Vincent's erectile dysfunction. You know, Gauguin was an alpha male. He was extremely competitive. And there's a real sense of one-upmanship in this picture. First of all, it's the sunflowers themselves. The sunflowers, as we said in the previous episode, this was Vincent's thing. And here is Gauguin, painting sunflowers from memory rather than from life, almost as if he's saying, "Anything you can do, I can do better."

• 3:34Speaker 00

  Do you think, so do you really see no homage at all in it? And I only say that because I know that a little later, after this infamous episode in Arles that we're going to talk about today, Gauguin, who had already admired earlier pictures of sunflowers that Vincent had created, not even in Arles but in Paris, before he'd got to the south of France, he writes to Vincent and asks for some of the sunflowers, because he sees them as the essential signature Vincent style, if you like. So he does seem to really admire them. And you could see, quite simply, if you're, you know, this is his admiration. But do you not see that at all?

• 4:10Speaker 01

  I don't see it, because what he's depicting is Vincent striving painfully, looking at, I mean, this brings us to a much bigger argument they have

• 4:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:19Speaker 01

  over observation versus memory.

• 4:22Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 4:22Speaker 01

  And here is Vincent, like this kind of, you know, sub-human imbecile, squinting as he's trying to copy the sunflowers, whereas Gauguin's just summoning it from his memory.

• 4:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think, I think there's a sort of, like, detail of the picture that really gets the heart of that, aside from the features of Vincent, the way he's portrayed. But if you look at his brush, which is very thin, which is the type of brush that Gauguin would have used, not the type of brush that Vincent would have used, is kind of connecting with the canvas in the background of the picture, and his fingertips, and the sunflower's petal, as if to say that the way he makes art is almost chimp-like, reproducing reality. That's what he's doing. Whereas he, Gauguin, as you say, is able, in December, to paint the sunflowers from the imagination, from the memory. The whole palette of the picture is much closer to Gauguin's signature colours, really, rather than Vincent's. So I suppose I find it, I mean, I find it really persuasive, this idea, that there's quite not even veiled critique in there.

• 5:16Speaker 00

  But I do also find it interesting that Vincent and Theo seem to quite like it after the event retrospectively.

• 5:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, but not at the time. In fact, the very evening after Vincent sees this picture, he goes to the bar with Gauguin, and he chucks a glass of absinthe at his face.

• 5:36Speaker 00

  Yes, but we may be jumping ahead there.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  We will come to that. But there's one final little tantalising detail that I've noticed on this picture. I don't think anyone has noticed this before.

• 5:46Speaker 00

  Oh, exciting.

• 5:47Speaker 01

  Look at the pot that is holding those flowers.

• 5:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, okay, so blue glazed.

• 5:51Speaker 01

  There is a little decorative motif on the front of that pot.

• 5:55Speaker 00

  Hang on, don't let, I want to, I want to see if I can get where you're... So this is, there are these red swirls, which look like they are a pattern on the glazed-blue side of the pot, which could be an Egyptian eye, or what is it, do you think?

• 6:11Speaker 01

  I think it's an ear.

• 6:13Speaker 00

  You... Wow!

• 6:15Speaker 01

  You heard it here first, folks. I think it's an ear. Now, listen.

• 6:19Speaker 00

  That is brilliant!

• 6:20Speaker 01

  Thank you very much. This is, I mean...

• 6:22Speaker 00

  Because they say that the sunflower itself, up at the top, is very eye-like, and it really is. If you look in the centre of the sunflower, it does look like a human eye. So he is anthropomorphising the flowers in the pot. But this is painted pre-ear incident, and you're claiming that he, do you think...

• 6:40Speaker 01

  No, my theory is that, yes, he paints this in December 1888, a couple of weeks, maybe even just a couple of days, before Vincent famously lops off his ear. But could he have added the ear motif afterwards, as an homage to that event?

• 6:56Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 6:57Speaker 01

  I think it's fascinating. I think this whole subject that we're going to be discussing in this episode is fascinating. This is the most extraordinary, one of the most extraordinary episodes from the history of art, isn't it?

• 7:11Speaker 00

  I mean, this, like, it's next level. It's beyond, it's such a great story. It's very, very well-known, but I don't think that should stop us telling it again, because...

• 7:19Speaker 01

  It's not going to stop me.

• 7:19Speaker 00

  It's tremendously exciting. I'm just still kind of thinking about the ear, because when you see Vincent in this picture, that is the ear on the left side of his head, that is the one he eventually does...

• 7:30Speaker 01

  I know.

• 7:31Speaker 00

  mutilate.

• 7:32Speaker 01

  He does.

• 7:32Speaker 00

  And so you can sort of see, very, very, very interesting. Although, on the other hand, on the other hand...

• 7:40Speaker 01

  On the other ear.

• 7:41Speaker 00

  On the other ear. You've got Vincent on the right, and we're sort of making an argument that you have this figure-like bunch of flowers on the left, balancing him with an eye and an ear. And of course, maybe that's more Gauguin-like, with it's the flowers from imagination. But, oh god, I don't know. I think that's a dazzling theory. I'm amazed it hasn't been suggested.

• 8:00Speaker 01

  I know, I know. Well, look, this Yellow House story is, for me, so compelling, because the story we're going to tell today, you've got these two giants of modern art, both of them at their very peak.

• 8:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  Both of them producing masterpiece after masterpiece, and yet living together in this tiny little house.

• 8:19Speaker 00

  It's the pressure cooker.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  And arguing over who's doing the cooking and who's doing the cleaning. It's, you can understand why this is a story that has been told so many times. And we are going to explore the remarkable art that came out of that period. But we're also going to try to get to the bottom of what actually happened on that fateful night when Vincent lost his ear. But first, just to remind listeners where we got to. In the last episode, Alastair, we got him down to Arles, in the south of France, where he has this extraordinary explosion of creativity, paints so many famous pictures, including, of course, the sunflowers, which we discussed in some detail. But things are all about to go wrong. So this is episode three in our four-part series on the life and work of Vincent van Gogh.

• 9:12Speaker 00

  So we have slightly been teasing this for quite some time. But the big antagonist, the great character other than Vincent in this episode is the artist Paul Gauguin. And Vincent's met Gauguin in Paris already, hasn't he?

• 9:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:31Speaker 00

  He has this idea, Vincent, that he, after leaving Paris, where he's been immersed in the avant garde and made some of these connections and friendships, including with Gauguin. He has this idea that he wants to collaborate and have a community of artists in the south of France. So we sometimes think of him as this loner eccentric, but he heads down there. He's still in touch with people like Gauguin, Theo, Bernard. He's hearing about various, he's hearing news from Paris. In fact, I think he even gets some pictures into a very important exhibition in Paris, although he doesn't seem to talk too much about that in the letters, so he's still connected.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:05Speaker 00

  And he has this vision that he's going to create what he calls a studio in, or studio of the south. And the setting for this is going to be this place which has become very famous. It no longer exists.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:18Speaker 00

  I've been to Aire, and if you go to Aire, to the spot where the famous Yellow House stood, it's gone. It was, I think, destroyed in the Second World War. It's been replaced with a building and over the road, there's a roundabout, there's a massive supermarket.

• 10:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:30Speaker 00

  It doesn't quite have the...

• 10:31Speaker 01

  I spent half an hour on Google Street View last night looking for it.

• 10:33Speaker 00

  Did you? Okay. It's, yeah, it's definitely no longer there. But initially, he doesn't stay in the Yellow House. And I think it's in the spring of 1888 that he starts to rent it. And first of all, he's not using the Yellow House as a place to live. He's using it as a studio. But as time goes on and his plan to create the studio of the south is beginning to coalesce, he's writing to Theo the whole time and they're trying to, between them, persuade Gauguin to come and join Vincent in this place, the Yellow House in Aire, to have this artist community where they're going to further progressive avant garde art. And at this point, Vincent himself, he's writing also to Emile Bernard, that young friend that he met in Paris,

• 11:14Speaker 00

  who's also linked with Gauguin, and he's inviting them to send, they want to swap self portraits. So this is why I was saying before in that previous episode, keep in mind the self portrait where Vincent has shaved himself. The one that you've now slightly destroyed in my mind has been politically very incorrect with the slanty eyes. We can gloss over that, it's a bit awkward. But yeah, where he is presenting himself as a Buddhist monk, partly his infatuation with all things Japanese, but that's what he sends to Gauguin. And the idea is almost as though he himself is going to be like, what, an acolyte, a disciple, a sort of religious follower of the leader of the avant garde, who is Paul Gauguin. We need to describe who he is in a moment. But eventually, over that summer, as it becomes clear that Gauguin, having staved things off for a long time,

• 11:56Speaker 00

  is thinking he might have finally come, he's been persuaded by Theo, and maybe in a moment we can discuss why he might want to come. Vincent gets wind of this and he needs to start decorating the Yellow House really quickly because he decides to live there, right?

• 12:08Speaker 01

  Can we just say a little bit about the Yellow House beforehand? It's a really grotty place.

• 12:12Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  It's on the north of Aire, on the Place La Martin, right by the train station. It's pretty small, it's got four rooms in total. There's a sitting room downstairs, a little kitchen at the back. And upstairs, there are two tiny adjoining bedrooms. There's no electricity, there's no gas, there's no heating, there are no toilets. It's really grotty.

• 12:31Speaker 00

  The bedrooms are very key because, we'll come to it later, but you can't get into them separately.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  You can't.

• 12:36Speaker 00

  So Vincent famously paints his bedroom and those are gorgeous pictures, I mean stunning pictures. Gorgeous, maybe not quite the right word, but that's his bedroom. Whoever stays in the guest bedroom eventually, and I think it's quite clear now that eventually it's going to be Gauguin, has to get through Vincent's bedroom to get there. So that gives you a sense of how cramped it all is.

• 12:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's very cramped. It's in a bad part of town, I mean, still a bad part of town. Very noisy, the trains, the brothels, bars, the whole thing's going on. It's very cheap, so it's 15 francs a month, and no one wants it except for Vincent. And after he takes it on in the spring, April, May, 1888, he goes under this, he embarks on this sort of grand designs project.

• 13:16Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  Where he fixes the windows and the doors, he renovates the interior, he gets gas put in, and he repaints the exterior even brighter yellow. It goes back to the idea of the sunflowers, actually, from the previous episode. And you're completely right, he has this idea that he wants to share this two bedroom place with another artist. He tries lots of people, doesn't he? I mean, he tries to get Theo down first, Theo says, no thanks.

• 13:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:39Speaker 01

  Then he tries Emile Bernard, Emile Bernard says, no thanks.

• 13:42Speaker 00

  Although he does send a self portrait, so he's obviously sort of engaging with Vincent. And in fact, Bernard is a big correspondent with Vincent. So they have a genuine artistic fruitful relationship.

• 13:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. He tries two other artists, both of whom say no, and then he turns to Paul Gauguin. And this brings us to the extraordinary character that is Paul Gauguin. So Gauguin is, I think, about five years older than Vincent. He's born in 1848, he's French. Though he actually spent some of his childhood in Peru, and from that point onwards, he thinks of himself as a very exotic individual. But like Vincent, he comes to art relatively late. He's done other things first. And so actually, he is, in the 1870s, a very successful stockbroker.

• 14:27Speaker 00

  It's quite mad, isn't it?

• 14:28Speaker 01

  In Paris, making a lot of money. And he first encounters the Impressionists as a buyer. He's buying up Impressionist paintings. And then all of that falls apart in 1882, when there's the great stock market crash in France.

• 14:40Speaker 00

  At that moment, I just happened to be at the Courtois Gallery recently. They have a really early marble head of Gauguin's wife that he created in collaboration with another artist. I think it's a beautiful object, really beautiful. Partly because you have this kind of, I guess, lacy collar which seems to stand up and there's a lot of drilling that's gone on one side of it, I assume. But it's very, very relatively traditional, quite conventional compared to what he's about to do.

• 15:09Speaker 01

  Yes, so after the stock market crash in 1882, he decides he's going to become a full time professional artist. His early work is relatively conventional, as you say. He then starts producing these quite conventional Impressionist style paintings in the manner of your favourite artist, Camus Pissaro. But it's only in the second half of the 1880s, especially when he's working up in Brittany, a place called Pont-Aven, that he starts to do something really, really special.

• 15:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:36Speaker 01

  And this is when he starts to dramatically simplify his works. He starts to build them from these very large blocks of colour. Sometimes he put outlines around them. And importantly, to go back to what we said at the start of this episode, he starts to work from memory rather than observation. And these works he produces in the mid to late 1880s, they are incredible. They are extraordinary. There's a picture in the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh, you know I love this.

• 16:05Speaker 00

  Yes, I do.

• 16:05Speaker 01

  Called Vision After The Sermon. This painting is so good, it gives me goosebumps. What is so wonderful about this picture is it's a group of people praying. And there is a sort of priest like figure looking away from us, who is almost summoning up the image. And that, I think, is a self portrait. That's Gauguin. And that is a great metaphor for his art, which is all, you know, painting doesn't have to come from the outside world, it can come from within.

• 16:30Speaker 00

  And a lot of kind of blazing red, that sort of flat colour you're describing, which is in there.

• 16:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, the colours are incredible. And because of these incredible works that Gauguin is producing, 1887, 1888, he starts to build a bit of a reputation for himself. These younger artists like Emile Bernard start to flock around him.

• 16:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:50Speaker 01

  And so for Vincent to get Gauguin to come down to Aire is a massive coup if he can persuade him to do it. Because Vincent hero worships Gauguin as well. Now, the thing to say about Gauguin is that though his reputation is very significant at this point within certain circles, he has no money. He's got this wife, this long suffering Danish wife called Mette. He's got five children, I mean, he ignores them for most of his life.

• 17:18Speaker 00

  He's not, by contemporary standards, he's not the sort of most morally upstanding individual, is he?

• 17:23Speaker 01

  I dislike him intensely.

• 17:25Speaker 00

  But nevertheless, we can park that.

• 17:26Speaker 01

  I really dislike Gauguin, but his art is just astonishingly good.

• 17:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:31Speaker 01

  But he really needs money and...

• 17:34Speaker 00

  Is this possibly a motivation for why he might be coming to Aire?

• 17:38Speaker 01

  I think that's the sole motivation. I think he doesn't want to go, he doesn't want to go to Aire, he doesn't want to live with Vincent.

• 17:43Speaker 00

  The charitable thing you could say is you've mentioned he spent some time in Brittany. And there is a sense with Gauguin that he is typical of the culture at that moment, where in the same way that Vincent gets jaded with Paris and leaves, there is a sense of being a bit over the metropolitan phenomenon, industrialised society, and wanting somehow to get away from high sophisticated culture and rejuvenate artistic energies in a place that's more, you know, to use contested terms today, quote unquote, primitive or authentic. And I think that's what he's finding amongst the peasants, if you like, of Brittany.

• 18:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:20Speaker 00

  And I've always sort of assumed that part of the appeal of coming to the south of France, which is not, I think, especially a place at this point, although it would be later, thanks to Vincent and indeed Gauguin, a place where artists might convene, that perhaps that could be part of the appeal. But I suppose the more mercenary reading, which you're hinting at, is connected with his dealer, who happens to be Vincent's brother.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  He is such a mercenary figure, Gauguin. I don't think he, I think that is the ultimate motive. There's a letter that Vincent writes to him. Can I read it? "My dear comrade Gauguin, I wanted to let you know that I've just rented a four room house in Aire and that it would seem to me that if I could find another painter inclined to work in the south and who, like myself, would be sufficiently absorbed in his work to be able to resign himself to living like a monk who goes to the brothel once a fortnight, it might be a good job. My brother would send 250 francs a month for both of us, which we would share."

• 19:14Speaker 00

  Ka-ching.

• 19:16Speaker 01

  And you know what Gauguin does? He's hoping to try and extract even more money out of Theo. Um, but he's very, very torn at this point. He doesn't want to go, but he needs the money. And he ends up stringing Vincent and Theo along for months and months and months. If you read the correspondence, it's so, so sad. I mean, I'm caricaturing a bit, but the correspondence really goes like this. Vincent saying, are you going to come? Are you going to come? And Gauguin goes, yeah, I might come. I'll see how it goes. And so Vincent writes back saying, oh, so will it be June? Will it be July? And then Gauguin doesn't respond at all. And then Vincent presumes, you know, his letter's been lost in the post and he writes again. And Gauguin says, well, I'm not feeling well. I may come, I may not come. I think partly he's genuinely torn. He doesn't want to go, but he needs the money.

• 20:01Speaker 01

  And partly in this very mercenary way, because he was of course a stockbroker. He is trying to extract ever more money out of Theo.

• 20:09Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  And eventually Theo does up the deal and he says, I'll give you 150 francs a month if you go down there and I'll pay your debts and I'll pay your expenses. And that is when Gauguin eventually decides to go.

• 20:20Speaker 00

  And how much, I mean, it's Theo's motivation is very interesting because he is a dealer in avant garde art in Paris. And he wants to have a relationship, I assume with Gauguin. And he's finding perhaps there's a market for that work, or he thinks there certainly will be in a big way. But he also has that fraternal side where he has Vincent's health, his wellbeing. He's so worried about him all the time. And he knows that Vincent is desperate for this to happen. And if he can pull it off, it might also, and perhaps more fundamentally for Theo, I don't know, actually be something that salves Vincent in this moment of, you know, he's had all of these difficulties during his life. And you do see, I mean, it's interesting to think back to the previous episode.

• 21:05Speaker 00

  We were talking about those sunflowers. I mean, it's kind of worth finishing that, that story now that we know about Gauguin, as it were, and that context. Because, you know, the reason partly he wants to paint sunflowers is Vincent gets annoyed. He hasn't done flowers until the summer because he's thinking this is a great motif and he comes to them. But he is highly conscious that Gauguin admired his pictures of sunflowers that he'd done in Paris. And if you look at those paintings of sunflowers, and we spoke a lot about the London National Gallery one, that flat background, the flat colours of the table in the background, and also those quite thick blue outlines there.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:41Speaker 00

  These are Gauguin-like motifs. So, you know, it's a weird way of thinking about a painting that seems so familiar to us and so strong. But maybe in a way it has a pandering aspect. It's trying to please Paul Gauguin because these are some of the pictures that will be decorating that yellow house that Vincent is very rapidly furnishing and decorating in anticipation of Gauguin's arrival.

• 22:05Speaker 01

  That's a really good point. I completely agree. I think that when Gauguin finally says, fine, I'm coming.

• 22:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:11Speaker 01

  Um, Van Gogh is probably the happiest he's ever been in his life. I mean, he, he's frantically furnishing the yellow house. He's going out and buying bedding and pots and pans and chairs. Chairs will be important later on.

• 22:23Speaker 00

  I mean, probably quite expensive for Theo. I mean.

• 22:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, poor old Theo's footing the bill for this. And so he's frantically decorating. He's painting these pictures, the sunflowers to, to decorate the, the various bedrooms. He is extremely excited. And we have to remember this is a, if he's trying to get this studio of the south off the ground, Gauguin is a real coup.

• 22:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:41Speaker 01

  Because Vincent's a nobody at this stage. Gauguin is quite a big deal. And so it's very, very exciting. And eventually the moment he has been waiting for arrives because I think it's early in the morning on the 23rd of October, 1888, someone knocks on the door of the yellow house. And Vincent runs downstairs like a child on a Christmas morning and opens the door and it's Gauguin. How exciting.

• 23:05Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 23:06Speaker 01

  Do you know, did you know about this, that when Gauguin turns up, you know, he was a fencer.

• 23:10Speaker 00

  Of course. So he has his kit, doesn't he?

• 23:12Speaker 01

  He has his kit.

• 23:13Speaker 00

  Right.

• 23:13Speaker 01

  He has a foil, is it a foil?

• 23:15Speaker 00

  I believe so.

• 23:16Speaker 01

  He has a foil in one hand. He's got his helmet under the other. So quite a strange, bizarre sight, but Vincent.

• 23:21Speaker 00

  A nice combative opening, isn't it?

• 23:23Speaker 01

  Exactly. It's a truly great moment for Vincent. His dream has come true. But I want all of our listeners to, to pause for a moment, reflect on Vincent's life to date and ask themselves, is this going to go well?

• 23:38Speaker 00

  No, quite. I mean, it, it's, it's interesting because to begin with, you sort of sense that things maybe do go okay. They go on some painting trips together. They're painting side by side. They are, there are some motifs which they seem to be in dialogue with one another.

• 23:55Speaker 01

  Although on day one, Gauguin says, well, ours are damp. And this yellow house is small and you told me all the women were so beautiful.

• 24:02Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  So he's pretty disappointed.

• 24:04Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  But yes, they do go on these painting, uh, painting expeditions.

• 24:07Speaker 00

  They have their expeditions and, and the whole sort of like period. I mean, that's the thing that's important to remember. This is so mythologised, this moment, but it is only a matter of weeks. It's through the autumn. I mean, my sense of how that relationship plays out is often through the art that you see produced. And there's this pair of pictures that, I mean, I love, everyone loves. This is a sort of art history classic moment where in the autumn Vincent paints, I guess, two quasi portraits and a self-portrait and a portrait of himself and Gauguin in the form of chairs.

• 24:45Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 24:45Speaker 00

  Which I assume must have been furniture within the yellow house.

• 24:49Speaker 01

  This is November, so this is a few weeks after Gauguin's moved in. They're settled.

• 24:53Speaker 00

  And they've got their rhythms, haven't they by now? I mean, they, they are, as you say, sometimes cooking themselves, they're going out to.

• 25:00Speaker 01

  That's a good story, actually. Yeah. So there are some tensions in the living arrangements, as you might imagine. Vincent, as Theo discovered in Paris, is filthy. This bothers Gauguin. Vincent is also terrible with money. This bothers Gauguin, who is a stockbroker.

• 25:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, he's got a system, hasn't he?

• 25:17Speaker 01

  He tries to develop a system where there's a box with the cash in it.

• 25:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:21Speaker 01

  That they can use if they want to go to a brothel or something like that. And you have to write down what you've taken out. Vincent does not obey this system. Then, as you say, there's the cooking. Vincent makes some soup. It's inedible. So Gauguin says from that point on, I'm going to make the food. You can go and buy the food. So there are these kind of amusing tensions that you would, you would inevitably have when two strong characters end up sharing a very small space together. There is also this sense, I think, of envy. I think that's playing a role in this.

• 25:49Speaker 00

  Ah, but which way around, I would ask?

• 25:52Speaker 01

  Well, I think Vincent is envious of Gauguin.

• 25:56Speaker 00

  You see, I think that what happens is that Gauguin gets there and he suddenly is seeing what Vincent has created. And on some level, he's recognising who actually is the leader of the avant garde at this moment.

• 26:09Speaker 01

  That's interesting. I mean, the other side of it is that Gauguin arrives and he is starting to receive, he start, his reputation is starting to build in Paris. And he is receiving letters from Theo saying, hey, I've just sold another picture. Here's the money. And I can imagine Gauguin, sort of dick that he is, flaunting these letters to Vincent and saying, hey, look, your brother's writing to me, he's got some money for me, I'm selling paintings. And that's really annoying Vincent.

• 26:34Speaker 00

  I mean, the, the other side of that though, is that I think he spends a lot of cash on, well, I don't know how much cash it is, but he buys an enormous roll of burlap cloth, doesn't he? Which they're both forced to use. And the reason that this is sort of interesting is that this is essentially, um, you know, support for painting. You can cut bits off, you stretch them, and that's the surface that you would prepare and then paint on. But burlap has this very, very coarse texture. Gauguin paints quite thinly and he quite likes the coarseness because in the painting, you can see that at the end of the painting. And it, it gives a sense of that, you know, for want of a better word, that slightly primitive quality, that sort of, you know, what is it, non-metropolitan authenticity he's searching for, you have there. Vincent is sort of somehow forced to use this burlap cloth, but he doesn't really like it at all.

• 27:17Speaker 00

  So he spends ages slathering paint over it to try and hide the weave. But in a sense, you could argue that he, Vincent, is benefiting from the windfalls that Gauguin is getting, I guess. And indeed Vincent is exhibiting in Paris in 1888. You know, the thing that, I, I know you're right to say that, that, that there's the hierarchy and that Gauguin's the dominant figure and Vincent is a non-entity at this point. But the actual truth is that he is starting to get known. You know, he is corresponding with the avant garde. He is actually, he has shown in Paris in very modest ways. But he's being talked about and fairly soon, he's actually being picked up and interest, he's attracting interest abroad, outside of France altogether.

• 27:59Speaker 00

  So I, I just wonder whether there's more, although Vincent himself goes into this thinking there's inequality in the relationship, because of just the strength of what he's doing, I wonder whether there's more parity than perhaps we tend to think.

• 28:10Speaker 01

  What do you think, Alastair, about, you mentioned just before the two images of the chairs.

• 28:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:16Speaker 01

  What do you think those paintings reveal about Vincent's psychological state at this point? The dynamic between the two men? Because they're two extremely famous paintings, aren't they? And hopefully we can place them side by side for viewers of the podcast.

• 28:30Speaker 00

  Yes. I mean, they were probably conceived by Vincent to be pendants, to be a pair of pictures. Because the way one faces one way and the other faces the, towards it, as it were. So you could imagine them hanging together. They're very, very deliberately contrasted. So Vincent's, his own chair is a very simple, yellow, rustic, basic wooden chair with a rush seat.

• 28:54Speaker 01

  Peasant chair.

• 28:55Speaker 00

  Peasant chair. He later added, there's a pipe in the middle of it and a pouch of tobacco. And it's placed on these very big red tiles. There's a wooden box with a prominent signature in the background, which has forms inside. People never quite know whether they are maybe sprouting onions. And you can see a blue door behind the chair. And actually because of the door, the hinge, the size of the tiles, there's a sense of this chair being slightly dwarfed. Whereas Gauguin's chair is far more ornate. I think it's walnut, it's polished wood and it's, so there's a sense of artistry and craft. And instead of a pipe on the seat, you have two novels and a tall.

• 29:39Speaker 00

  Possibly phallic, lit candle, and in the background, you mentioned the installation of the gas lighting, there's a gas lamp on a green wall. So the Gauguin chair exists in a world of, it's kind of nocturnal, isn't it?

• 29:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's something of the night about Gauguin.

• 29:54Speaker 00

  There's something of the night, and with this artificial illumination. But I think it's that thing you were describing of, he's working from memory and imagination, which is why you have the novels, whereas there's a much more sort of simple, honest, daylit quality to Van Gogh's chair. And I suppose, to answer your question about the state, you do wonder, because they're quite opposed in terms of values they represent, you do wonder whether fairly swiftly Vincent is realising that actually Gauguin's banging on and on and on about the memory and imagination, and possibly slightly mocking Vincent's interests and tastes in general in art and literature as being essentially a bit basic and he likes kind of realistic things, and

• 30:37Speaker 00

  he's painting from, he loves painting from nature, which Gauguin seemingly abhors. And you wonder whether these paintings are Vincent's recognition of a sort of schism between them in terms of their approaches to art making.

• 30:50Speaker 01

  It's also quite revealing of him that he gives Gauguin the better chair. There is that sense that although they disagree, he is very much aware of the fact that Gauguin is the senior figure, he is the kind of, he is the master.

• 31:03Speaker 00

  But I've always seen that as a slight sort of Vincent loves playing the peasant.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:07Speaker 00

  You know, when he's in the borinage, you know, he gives all, he's sleeping on the floor in the hut with no sort of possessions at all. And so in a sense, maybe that's, in the way that he may have felt chastised by Gauguin for always wanting to actually paint from nature, even though he's trying to paint from memory and imagination, but it's not quite working, maybe that itself is him chastising Gauguin in turn.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  Maybe.

• 31:25Speaker 00

  You know, that he is the sort of good, honest worker, and Gauguin, for all of his search for authenticity and primitiveness, can't quite ditch the metropolitan stockbroker broker element.

• 31:34Speaker 01

  You might be right. I mean, I think the one thing I would say is that these pictures capture for me what is at the very heart of Vincent's genius, which is his ability to invest inanimate objects with life, with soul, with personality, whether it's a chair, or a pair of shoes, or a bedroom, or a starry sky, or a cypress tree in the wind. Vincent has this extraordinary ability, I think more than perhaps any other artist, to anthropomorphise the world, to make the world an expression of his emotional state. They're incredible pictures.

• 32:11Speaker 00

  What do you think about the, I mean, is there anything, you mentioned at the start of this episode, the thumb in the palette, which I confess I hadn't been thinking about Vincent's erectile dysfunction until that moment. Is there anything to be said about the erect candle, James, without putting too fine a point on it, in Gauguin's chair, and the sideways, non-erect pipe in Vincent's?

• 32:33Speaker 01

  Just it's revelation after revelation coming in this podcast, isn't it? Yes, quite possibly there is something in that. One of the other things, just thinking back to that original painting, that Gauguin portrait, the sunflowers, is actually resting on what I think is Vincent's chair.

• 32:49Speaker 00

  No, it is.

• 32:50Speaker 01

  I think it's the rush seat, isn't it?

• 32:51Speaker 00

  You see, I think, again, that's actually, you know, discussed, but is that Gauguin doffing his cap to Vincent motif, if you like?

• 32:59Speaker 01

  I do love the way that the Gauguin chair is painted. There's that lovely little indigo reflection on the side of the walnut, which is just beautifully, beautifully done.

• 33:10Speaker 00

  There's a couple of other, just briefly whilst we're on chairs and thinking about Vincent with chairs. A few years earlier, Vincent had written to his brother Theo that he had seen a chair that was vacant, that his father had once occupied, before obviously his father had died, and that he, Vincent, had cried like a child. And I think it's quite interesting as well that Vincent, I think in the first part we spoke about, he really admired Dickens, he collected a lot of prints. One of the sources for these paintings may be a famous British print by someone who illustrated Dickens's unfinished last novel, who created an image of Dickens's empty chair in his study after his death.

• 33:51Speaker 00

  And so you could look at these chairs, you know, there's a melancholic aspect to an empty chair.

• 33:56Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 33:57Speaker 00

  And it's interesting that he reworks them, Vincent, in January 1889, after this whole notorious episode of the Yellow House is finished, because then you've got these, you know, you imagine him knocking about by himself in the Yellow House and seeing these empty chair pictures, suddenly they take on quite a poignant quality.

• 34:15Speaker 01

  And they would prove very prophetic, actually Gauguin's empty chair would prove very prophetic, because very soon Vincent's housemate would decide to leave the Yellow House, and this would have catastrophic consequences. So please do join us after the break.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  Here at Stories of Art, we are so grateful to all of you all over the world for listening, watching and commenting. We've been thrilled with the response so far.

• 34:44Speaker 00

  And some good news, you can now find us on Instagram at storiesofart.henny. So please do follow us, comment, and by all means, suggest topics for future episodes.

• 35:05Speaker 01

  Welcome back to Stories of Art. Now, as the autumn of 1888 unfolds, the relationship between Vincent van Gogh and Gauguin, it begins to unravel, doesn't it?

• 35:18Speaker 00

  It does deteriorate, and I think it's interesting to look at the letters for some sources here. There's a word that is used again and again by Vincent to describe the atmosphere, and it's a variation on electric or electricity.

• 35:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:32Speaker 00

  So Vincent's describing the tense atmosphere in the Yellow House as excessively electric, and he talks about how they often are arguing, that's the sense you get, and afterwards, they're both, this is what he says, "as empty as an electric battery after it's run down". And we started with the Gauguin picture of Van Gogh painting sunflowers that you memorably described as the sort of greatest put-down in art history, and, you know, Vincent later is talking about, to his brother, "Did you see the portrait Gauguin did of me painting sunflowers?", and I think I quoted this, "My face has lit up after all a lot since, but it was indeed me extremely tired and charged with electricity as I was then." I think it's really interesting, because he, Vincent's painting a hell of a lot at this time.

• 36:15Speaker 00

  You know, you've established in this series that this is a really productive, prolific moment for Vincent, and I think in this autumn he's painting maybe, you know, he's done 25 pictures, so he's just exhausted by the sheer creativity. And then he's contending with, you know, someone who did have loner qualities, having to deal with Gauguin the whole time, who was a very big, overbearing presence. So you sense that that's also draining him of energy.

• 36:41Speaker 01

  They're drinking a lot.

• 36:42Speaker 00

  They're drinking a lot and they're arguing a lot. And so things are starting to deteriorate in a really quite profound and terrible way for Vincent.

• 36:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then of course, as the autumn rolls on into November and then into December, the weather is awful. They have 20 days of non-stop rain.

• 37:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:01Speaker 01

  So the two men are stuck inside this tiny little house, having many, many arguments. And of course, Alastair, Christmas is approaching.

• 37:09Speaker 00

  I remember this.

• 37:10Speaker 01

  And we know that Vincent is always triggered by Christmas. This is how Gauguin puts the situation. He says, "Between two such beings as he and I, the one a perfect volcano, the other boiling too inwardly, a sort of struggle was preparing." And Vincent's behaviour in November and into December becomes increasingly erratic. Gauguin becomes increasingly worried and actually scared by his behaviour. There's one story when sometimes Gauguin will wake up in the middle of the night, and he would see Vincent standing over his bed.

• 37:44Speaker 00

  Well, this is why I mentioned the bedroom detail, because there's no way out for Gauguin.

• 37:48Speaker 01

  There's no way out.

• 37:49Speaker 00

  You know, he has to get past him, he suddenly sees this looming figure. But supposedly he then could, almost the way Gauguin, because, you know, we're going to come on to this, but there are, Gauguin tells this story in various ways, and Gauguin's quite an unreliable self-regarding narrator, so we just have to bear that in mind. But it's almost as though he can cowl Vincent back, and he will go back to sleep and then sleep very, very deeply.

• 38:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:09Speaker 00

  But you're seeing the beginnings of, I mean, I was going to say, being stuck together in, you know, all of that rain, it's enough to send you mad. And of course, that is literally what is going on here, very, very sadly.

• 38:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so at some point, I think it just becomes too much for Gauguin, and he tells Vincent in December, having been there for not even two months, really five or six weeks, he says to him, "I'm leaving", because he can't get, he's hated it from day one, Gauguin. He went there really quite reluctantly. The moment he stepped inside, he thought, "This isn't great." He wasn't enjoying living with Vincent. So he tells Vincent, "I'm going to leave at some point before Christmas."

• 38:46Speaker 00

  Can I say, another incident which is in the run-up, in the deterioration of their relationship, is to do with the painting, the portrait by Gauguin, which we've discussed a lot, and you've mentioned the absinthe moment.

• 38:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 38:58Speaker 00

  Because according to Gauguin, when eventually he, and this is quite soon before the really notorious incident with the ear, this is sort of mid, late-ish December, Gauguin is showing the picture that he's created of Vincent, and it doesn't really go very well as a viewing, because supposedly, according to Gauguin, Vincent's response when he sees it is, "It's me, but it's me gone mad."

• 39:20Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 39:21Speaker 00

  And this is the moment after which they go out to the café.

• 39:24Speaker 01

  I've got the passage.

• 39:25Speaker 00

  Have you? Okay.

• 39:26Speaker 01

  Gauguin says, "That very evening we went to the café. He took a light absinthe. Suddenly he flung the glass and its contents at my head. I avoided the blow, and taking him bodily in my arms, went out to the café across the place, Victor Hugo. Not many minutes later Vincent found himself in his bed, where in a few seconds he was asleep, not to awake until morning."

• 39:46Speaker 00

  The deep sleep again.

• 39:47Speaker 01

  "When he awoke, he said to me very calmly, 'My dear Gauguin, I have a vague memory that I offended you last evening.'"

• 39:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:54Speaker 01

  So the pressure cooker is building, isn't it?

• 39:56Speaker 00

  Oh no, totally, but I love in the source, this sort of slightly 19th century Wildian dialogue that comes in here, "My dear Gauguin." But yeah, no, it completely is, and we are basically now on the cusp of the breakdown itself.

• 40:09Speaker 01

  It's the 23rd of December, the day before Christmas Eve, of course it's Christmas, and the real trigger point is that on that day Vincent hears that his brother Theo is getting married. This is a disaster for Vincent. I mean, the whole Yellow House project is falling apart. Gauguin is abandoning him, and now he fears that his brother Theo is going to abandon him. And this is what precipitates what will happen next.

• 40:38Speaker 00

  The marriage of Theo is so important as context, and I'd forgotten that detail, I have to confess. But Vincent basically fears that Theo will have new responsibilities to his wife and future possible family, and will no longer be able to bankroll Vincent's life in the way that he has. So that must have been profoundly destabilising. This is also the moment where finally, he basically confronts Gauguin, who he sensed, as you've pointed out, wants to get the hell out of there, and says, "Look, are you going to leave?" And Gauguin finally says, "Yes, I am."

• 41:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:16Speaker 00

  And it's at this moment where, according to Gauguin, this is where it all really kicks off.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  So this is the, this is just after dinner on the evening of the 23rd of December.

• 41:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, and Vincent supposedly, this is my recollection, he takes a newspaper article that he's been reading, and thrusts this article into Gauguin's hand and says, "The murderer took flight."

• 41:40Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 41:41Speaker 00

  Now, what do you think, if he did say this, what is going on there?

• 41:45Speaker 01

  Can I read the whole passage?

• 41:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:46Speaker 01

  Because I think it's useful for listeners to hear exactly what Paul Gauguin says. So it's just after dinner on the evening of the 23rd of December. Gauguin has told Vincent he's going to leave at some point.

• 41:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:58Speaker 01

  Vincent, somewhere in the house, probably up in his bedroom, he hears the door slam shut. And he's, he presumes Gauguin's gone, he's left for good. And so this is what Gauguin says many years later. He says, "When evening had come and I had bolted my dinner, I felt I must go out alone and take the air along some paths that were bordered by flowering laurel. I had almost crossed the Place Victor Hugo when I heard behind me a well-known step, short, quick, irregular.

• 42:27Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 42:28Speaker 01

  I turned about on the instant as Vincent rushed towards me, an open razor in his hand. My look at that moment must have had great power in it."

• 42:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, here we go.

• 42:38Speaker 01

  Free stopped and lowering his head set off running towards home. Was I negligent on this occasion? Should I have disarmed him and tried to calm him? I have often questioned my conscience about this, but I have never found anything to approach myself with."

• 42:51Speaker 00

  I mean, in many ways, it's an appalling passage. He is completely trying to absolve himself of all guilt. He's effectively characterising Vincent as a sort of mindless beast, a bit like we suggested in his painting of Vincent, he's painting him always like a sort of chimp, just replicating nature. And that he's able, in that sort of human, Orpheus-like way, to quell the wild animals with his just sheer charisma and send him back. And also, he introduces the razor much later.

• 43:17Speaker 01

  So that account, Alastair, was written by Gauguin some years later.

• 43:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:22Speaker 01

  We've already expressed a certain degree of suspicion about it.

• 43:27Speaker 00

  I think skepticism, because actually, earlier, he gave a different account.

• 43:31Speaker 01

  Can you read that one?

• 43:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, so this is what he says, according to a critic called Albert Aurier, who would eventually write a very important article pretty soon about Vincent van Gogh, start to establish his reputation, so he's an important figure himself. Gauguin reportedly says, "Vincent ran after me, he was going out, it was night. I turned round, because for some time he'd been acting strangely, but I mistrusted him. Then he told me, 'You are silent, but I will also be silent.'" So you've got these different fragments. You've got the fragment where Vincent has asked Gauguin, "Are you going to leave?" Gauguin says, "Yes." And Vincent takes a sentence from a newspaper, which I mentioned before, puts it in Gauguin's hand, which is "The murderer took flight."

• 44:17Speaker 00

  It's from a news report about a crime involving a murderer, but clearly it's insinuating that Gauguin is somehow murderer of he, Vincent of him. And that Gauguin's scarpering when he shouldn't really do that. And then he's following him, obviously in a slight sort of dazed stupor. But the two accounts, the crucial difference is he doesn't have a razor in both of them.

• 44:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the big difference.

• 44:39Speaker 00

  So don't you think that basically all that stuff that you read in the later account, where Gauguin's sort of saying, "I'm not guilty", having the razor is quite important as extenuating circumstances, right? Because it's kind of saying, "Look, I was in danger, I was being threatened by someone." Because eventually, Gauguin doesn't sit and soothe him, he just goes off to spend the night in a hotel.

• 45:01Speaker 01

  I think that razor thing is, is so revealing. You would think that if you were threatened by a razor, that would be an important part of the story. You would think he would remember it.

• 45:12Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 45:12Speaker 01

  You would think the people he told would remember it. But in those accounts that date right after the event, there is no mention of the razor, which makes me think he invented that later, when Vincent was dead, when Theo was dead, to make his story stronger, and as you say, to make him feel like the victim. I don't believe it.

• 45:28Speaker 00

  I don't believe it, and I think it's interesting to, I think it's important to have that skepticism. But essentially, what you have now is a late night moment, a crisis has happened, Vincent's in a strange state. These two men part company.

• 45:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:41Speaker 00

  Gauguin does spend that night in a hotel.

• 45:43Speaker 01

  Was a sensible decision, I think.

• 45:45Speaker 00

  Which was a sensible decision. He will return tomorrow, and that's itself a kind of like really impactful and important moment. But the next source that I think is worth quoting, which really helps give us a sense, there's a newspaper report, isn't there?

• 45:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 45:58Speaker 00

  So this one I've, I've got here, I mean, it's quite fun to read.

• 46:01Speaker 01

  Yes, read it, please.

• 46:02Speaker 00

  So this, this one is, there's an-

• 46:03Speaker 01

  This is a true crime podcast, isn't it, Sunday?

• 46:06Speaker 00

  Suddenly we'll get an audience. So this is, it's an ARL journal, and this was a report that's published on December 30th, 1888. Okay? This is what it says. "Last Sunday," so that's the 23rd of December, "at 11:30 in the evening, Vincent," and then it murders his surname, seems to spell it, "Vogoch, a painter of Dutch origin, called at the brothel number one," there was more than one in ARL, "asked for a woman called Rachel and handed her his ear, saying, 'Guard this object with your life.' Then he disappeared."

• 46:46Speaker 01

  So what do you think happened in the intervening period, in the gap between him rushing off after parting ways with Gauguin, and then getting to the brothel? I mean, did he go home? Did he slice it off in his bedroom?

• 47:01Speaker 00

  Well, we know that he had the newspaper and he's handing a bit of that to Gauguin. And I've always assumed, and certainly the stuff that I've read has just given me this impression, that he's going back to the Yellow House, he's by himself, maybe you have a different theory. And this razor is there.

• 47:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:18Speaker 00

  He mutilates his left ear, correct? We don't know whether he cuts off the entire ear or a section of the ear, there's debate about that. But according to this report, he's then wrapping up this body part in a piece of newspaper, and then he takes it to a prostitute in one of the brothels he's frequented, which, as you've established, he possibly hasn't had the happiest experiences in these brothels, whereas Gauguin has been rather more successful at these brothels.

• 47:48Speaker 01

  Thumb again, isn't it?

• 47:49Speaker 00

  Thumb, comes back to that. And he gives this object to this sex worker, Rachel, who supposedly, as you well might, faints. And this is clearly, according to the newspaper reporter, this is a bit of editorialising, but it's the action that could only be described as the action of a pitiful madman. You can kind of understand what's going on. But the next day, the police are called, and they go round to the house, and they do find Vincent there, and there's a lot of blood everywhere.

• 48:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's blood everywhere. Can I read Gauguin's account? Because Gauguin has a good night's sleep in the hotel, returns to the Yellow House the next morning. There's a crowd assembled around the house, a policeman actually says, "You've murdered Vincent." And then Gauguin goes inside the house and he walks upstairs, and this, I mean, in classic self-serving Gauguin manner, this is what he writes. "In the bed lay Vincent, rolled up in the sheets, humped up like a guncock." Don't know what a guncock is. "He seemed lifeless, gently, very gently. I touched the body, the heat of which showed that it was still alive. For me, it was as if I had suddenly got back all my energy, all my spirit."

• 49:02Speaker 01

  And Vincent is then taken to a hospital where he is treated, and we will be talking more about the aftermath in the next episode. Can we try to get to the bottom of the ear thing?

• 49:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 49:13Speaker 01

  Because there's been lots of debate about what he actually cuts off.

• 49:16Speaker 00

  Right.

• 49:16Speaker 01

  So for a long time, people thought it was the whole ear. Then for a long time, people thought it was just the bottom part of the ear.

• 49:23Speaker 00

  Now, I, I haven't, I should have done my homework, James. I have a half memory, there's a famous letter, isn't there? Where there's a diagram of the ear with a dotted line, which from memory is across the lower section of the ear. No, is that wrong?

• 49:36Speaker 01

  It is a half memory, because part of that was right, part of it was wrong. So for a long time, people thought it was just the lobe had been cut off.

• 49:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:42Speaker 01

  But actually, relatively recently, a scholar called Bernadette Murphy found a letter that had been written by the doctor who treated the injury, a man called Felix Ray.

• 49:54Speaker 00

  Who he paints.

• 49:54Speaker 01

  Who he paints. And this letter has a diagram of the injury with the dotted line indicating where the ear had been cut off. And this letter reveals that the entire ear, apart from a tiny little bit at the bottom of the lobe, had been removed. So now, most people think that Vincent did cut off his entire ear. So look, the question is-

• 50:17Speaker 00

  If you can ask this of someone who's having a terrible mental crisis and episode, why does he mutilate the ear?

• 50:25Speaker 01

  Well, yes.

• 50:26Speaker 00

  Very grandly, we're art historians, I suppose, and we're looking for symbolism. You know, what do you read into self-mutilation of the ear as opposed to other parts of the body he could have attacked?

• 50:40Speaker 01

  I've got two theories. I'll advance one after the other.

• 50:43Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 50:43Speaker 01

  My first theory is that perhaps he was hearing voices. You know, we do know that later in his story, we'll discuss this in the next episode, he was hearing voices. So it's possible he was cutting off his ear to try and prevent those voices getting into his head.

• 50:59Speaker 00

  Ah, okay, okay. Literally, he wants to stop hearing the voices.

• 51:03Speaker 01

  Possibly.

• 51:04Speaker 00

  In this moment, and he talks later to Theo, because it's just reminded me, I sort of, it's weirdly, I find it heartrending detail, he describes how in the crisis, he suddenly, he's there back in, what's the name of the village he grew up in initially?

• 51:16Speaker 01

  Zundert.

• 51:16Speaker 00

  He's in Zundert, and that he's talking about how in this moment of crisis, he could suddenly visualize all of it, the land, the house, everything. And it's almost as though he's finding mentally some sort of safe space, a refuge, a harbour for himself, which goes right back to childhood in this moment. So possibly that's, that's theory number one.

• 51:35Speaker 01

  My second theory.

• 51:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:36Speaker 01

  Is that it all comes down to bullfighting.

• 51:38Speaker 00

  Oh, my God, I haven't heard this one.

• 51:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is, I think this, this might be up there with the, the ear on the pot at the beginning of the episode, uh, theory. Okay, so there are a lot of bullfights taking place in the south of France. And we know from the letters that Vincent went to these bullfights. I actually went to a bullfight very nearby once, in Nîmes nearby, one of the worst things I've ever seen. But during a bullfight, if a matador has been particularly courageous, they cut the bull's ear off and they give it to the matador as a gift.

• 52:09Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 52:11Speaker 01

  And I just wonder whether that is what Vincent is channeling. He is the bull, he is the sacrificial victim in this relationship with Gauguin. And Gauguin is the matador, the man who killed him.

• 52:21Speaker 00

  But why does he give the gift to the, to Rachel?

• 52:23Speaker 01

  He wanted to give it, he thought Gauguin had gone to the brothel.

• 52:26Speaker 00

  I see.

• 52:27Speaker 01

  So I think he went to the brothel to find Gauguin, to give him the ear.

• 52:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:31Speaker 01

  Gauguin wasn't there because he'd gone to the hotel instead.

• 52:34Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 52:34Speaker 01

  And so he gives it to the broth, to the, to the sex worker, thinking that eventually it would find its way to Gauguin. So I think he's playing out this drama of the so-called bullfight. It would explain why he sought out Gauguin, why he wanted to do something with the ear and give it to someone. It would also explain about that cutting, about the murderer taking flight. He is, he is presenting Gauguin as the villain in the piece, I think.

• 53:00Speaker 00

  Yes, I think that's extremely interesting. I sort of see, what, what's definitely going on, because I mean, I'm not knocking that at all, I think that's fascinating theory, is we all think collectively as Vincent as being this kind of saint of modern art, you know? But in this moment, he's almost writing that mythology. It's clear that there's some ritualistic aspect to this act, and it's about self-punishment as well as self-harm. And yes, it's like self-sacrifice, which itself has almost religious connotations. I think people, Martin gave it in this book, but others, you know, spoken about possible other precedents, if you like, for ear cutting.

• 53:41Speaker 00

  Vincent, very big reader, there's a novel by Zola in which there's an ear-cutting moment.

• 53:46Speaker 01

  Ah, I didn't know that.

• 53:47Speaker 00

  There's a biblical story. Vincent, son of a preacher, son of a Protestant minister. There's the Christ in the garden of Gethsemane, where someone who comes in gets their ear chopped off, it's a punitive moment. And most tantalizing of all, particularly maybe for a British audience, 30th of September, 1888, in London, a poor woman called Catherine Eddows has her ear sliced off by Jack the Ripper. And we know that he's reading the, the murder reports, which that one wasn't about Jack the Ripper, but this is a sensational case. So there's a lot that's going on that's feeding into this self-destructive act.

• 54:27Speaker 01

  Wow, so interesting. Well, Vincent gets taken to a hospital, Gauguin telegrams Theo, and Theo arrives late the following day on Christmas Eve. So, so Vincent does get his Christmas reunion. And Theo, do you know what he writes? Oh, he says, "It was terribly sad being there, because from time to time, all his grief would well up inside and he would try to weep but couldn't. Poor fighter and poor, poor sufferer. Nothing can be done to relieve his anguish now, but it is deep and hard for him to bear. Had he just once found someone to whom he could pour his heart out, it might never have come to this." Very sad.

• 55:08Speaker 00

  And actually, that suggests that there really is some guilt in Gauguin's call.

• 55:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:12Speaker 00

  And Theo, actually, interestingly, that he does write back about what he finds, and he's sort of saying, as he says, he's found Vincent in the hospital in Arles. He's talking to the doctors, and Theo asked in this letter, which was to his fiancee on the 28th of December, 1888, he had asked, "Will he remain insane? The doctors think it possible, but dare not yet say for certain." So everything really about Vincent, after he established himself as an artist quite brilliantly in Arles, in the south of France, is suddenly profoundly and disturbingly up in the air. So what is next for Vincent? Join us next time to find out. Goodbye.

• 55:49Speaker 01

  Goodbye.

• 55:58Speaker 00

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