Why is the artist Vincent Van Gogh famous? Van Gogh: poignant and lonely Van Gogh's last words before his death

According to the main version, the cause of Vincent Van Gogh's suicide was his mental illness - schizophrenia. The artist realized how hopelessly ill he was, and one day, after making the last stroke of the painting “Crows in a Wheat Field,” he shot himself in the head.

A short biography of the Dutch painter, set out in a few sentences in some encyclopedic publication, is unlikely to be able to tell about the misadventures with which his life was so full. Van Gogh was born on March 30, 1853; died July 29, 1890; in the period from 1869 to 1876 he served as a commission agent for an art and trading company in The Hague, Brussels, London and Paris. And in 1876 he worked as a teacher in England. Afterwards he became interested in theological issues and from 1878 he was a preacher in the mining region of Borinage (in Belgium). True, he spent only a little over a year in the field of preaching and, according to biographers, was forced to leave Borinage due to a conflict with church authorities. Van Gogh was unable to carry out his mission as a preacher with due dignity; he was unable to console miners exhausted by hunger and the hardships of a miserable life with promises of a bright future. Simple human grief echoed in his soul as if it were his own. For a whole year, he tried to get at least some effective help from those in power for his flock, but when he realized that all efforts were in vain, he was completely disappointed in his mission, in people vested with power, but not willing to help their neighbor, in God...

During this period, Van Gogh made his first inept attempts to draw; the characters in his sketches were, of course, the inhabitants of the mining village. In the 1880s, he turned seriously to art and began attending the Academy of Arts. Vincent studied at the Brussels Academy until 1881, then moved to Antwerp, where he remained until 1886. At first, Van Gogh eagerly listened to the advice of the painter A. Mauve in The Hague. He continued to enthusiastically paint miners, peasants and artisans, finding their faces the most beautiful and full of true suffering. Researchers of his work have noted that a series of paintings and sketches from the mid-1880s (including “Peasant Woman”, “Potato Eaters”, etc.) were painted in a dark painterly palette. In general, the artist’s works spoke of his painfully acute perception of human suffering; depression was clearly evident in them. However, the artist always managed to recreate the “oppressive atmosphere of psychological tension.”

In 1886, Van Gogh moved to Paris, where he began to actively visit private art studio. He enthusiastically studied impressionist painting, Japanese engravings, synthetic works by P. Gauguin and was simply obsessed with painting. Again, as experts note, Van Gogh’s palette changed during this period: it became lighter and more cheerful. The dark, earthy colors disappeared, and instead the artist began to use pure blue, golden-yellow and even red tones. At this time, a dynamic brush stroke characteristic of his work appeared, which so originally conveys the mood of the painting. The following works by Van Gogh belong to this period: “Bridge over the Seine”, “Pope Tanguy”, etc.

In 1888, Van Gogh was already in Arles. It was here that the originality of his creative style was finally determined and formed. In the paintings painted during this period, one can feel the fiery artistic temperament of the artist, his passionate desire to achieve harmony, beauty and happiness. But at the same time there was also a certain fear of forces hostile to man. Art critics refer to the abundance of different shades of yellow on the canvases, in particular in the depiction of landscapes shining with sunny colors of the south, as in the painting “Harvest. La Croe Valley." Echoes of fear also seeped into the artist’s depiction of ominous creatures, which are more reminiscent of characters from a nightmare, as in the painting “Night Cafe”. However, researchers of Van Gogh’s work also note that during this period, the artist’s extraordinary ability to fill not only nature and people with life (“Red Vineyards in Arles”), but even inanimate objects (“Van Gogh’s Bedroom in Arles”) was especially clearly demonstrated.

Van Gogh always painted fiercely and passionately. Going to work early in the morning in some protected corner of the countryside, he returned home only late in the evening. He wanted to immediately, in one sitting, finish the painting he started in the morning. He forgot about time, that he was hungry... He didn’t seem to feel tired at all. It is not surprising that such intense work soon caused him nervous exhaustion. IN recent years he increasingly experienced bouts of mental illness, which eventually led him to a hospital in Arles. He was then transferred to a mental hospital in Saint-Rémy, and finally settled in Auvers-sur-Oise, under the constant supervision of a doctor.

During the last two years of his life, Van Gogh painted as if possessed; in his work this was manifested in the extremely heightened expression of color combinations. In the paintings of this period, one can note a sharp change in the artist’s mood - “from frenzied despair and gloomy visionaryism to a tremulous feeling of enlightenment and peace.” If “Road with Cypresses and Stars” leads the viewer to despair, then his “Landscape at Auvers after the Rain” can inspire only the most pleasant feelings.

It is difficult to establish the real cause of Van Gogh's illness. His life is full of episodes that mark his extreme incontinence and excitability. One day he quarreled with Gauguin, whom he adored and admired. According to one version, the cause of the quarrel was the woman with whom Van Gogh was in love. In a fit of anger, he attacked Gauguin with a razor, wanting to take revenge for his desecrated love, but at the last moment he changed his mind. Then he cut off one of his ears with the same razor and sent it in a letter ex-lover. After this incident, Gauguin left his friend, fearing new outbursts of rage.

The duration of these types of attacks in Van Gogh fluctuated between several weeks and several hours. During his attacks, the artist himself seemed to remain fully conscious and even maintained a critical attitude towards himself and his surroundings. According to the chief physician of the hospital in Arles, “Vincent Van Gogh, 35 years old, had been ill for six months with acute mania with general delirium. At this time he cut off his own ear.” And further: “Vincent Van Gogh, 36 years old, a native of Holland, admitted on May 8, 1889, suffering from acute mania with visual and auditory hallucinations, experienced a significant improvement in his condition...”

Like a madman, Van Gogh painted and painted his paintings using incredible color combinations, completing each new painting by the evening of one day. His productivity was incredible. “In the intervals between attacks, the patient is completely calm and passionately indulges in painting,” stated the attending physician.

The tragedy happened on May 16, 1890. Van Gogh committed suicide while working on another painting. There were plenty of motives for his suicide: lack of recognition, misunderstanding of those around him, eternal ridicule both among venerable painters and among friends and relatives, mental illness, poverty, and finally... Van Gogh’s brother, Theo, was, perhaps, the only person, who understood, loved the artist and cared for him. He spent almost his entire fortune on maintaining Van Gogh, which ultimately led Theo to complete ruin. The consciousness that he, Van Gogh, had brought his beloved brother to poverty further intensified his despair, because he was extremely conscientious and boundlessly kind person. Coincidences of this kind of circumstances are tragic for a genius. Van Gogh shot himself in the stomach - this is what any normal person could have done if he found himself in simply monstrous conditions. These conditions seemed even more unbearable for a person with an acute and even painful sensitivity to the surrounding world.

Psychologists diagnosed the artist’s illness as manic-depressive psychosis. “His seizures were cyclical, recurring every three months. In hypomanic phases, Van Gogh again began to work from sunrise to sunset, painting rapturously and with inspiration, two or three paintings a day,” the doctor wrote. The bright, literally hot colors of his paintings of the last period also speak in favor of this diagnosis.

According to one version, the cause of the artist’s death was the harmful effects of absinthe, to which he was partial, like many other creative people. This absinthe, according to experts, contained wormwood extract alpha-thujone. This substance, entering the human body, penetrates the nervous tissue, including the brain, which leads to disruption of the process of normal inhibition of nerve impulses, in other words, the nervous system “breaks off”. As a result, the person experiences seizures, hallucinations, and other signs of psychopathic behavior. It should be noted that the alkaloid thujone is found not only in wormwood, but also in thuja, which gave the name to this alkaloid, and in many other plants. Ironically, it is these unfortunate thujas that grow on the grave of Vincent Van Gogh, whose intoxication finally destroyed the artist.

Among other versions about Van Gogh's illness in lately another one appeared. It is known that the artist often experienced a condition accompanied by ringing in the ears. So, experts have found that this phenomenon is accompanied by severe depression. Only the professional help of a psychotherapist can get rid of this condition. Presumably, it was the ringing in the ears due to Meniere's disease, and even in combination with depression, that drove Van Gogh to madness and suicide.

Be that as it may, Van Gogh’s work gave humanity amazing masterpieces. His vision of the world was so unusual and so amazing that it is unlikely that any other artist could repeat Van Gogh's masterpieces. However, he managed to capture not only his own original vision, but also impose it on the viewer. True, he received recognition only after his death. If during his lifetime no one understood him and during his entire long-suffering period of creativity Van Gogh barely managed to sell only one of his works, now his paintings are sold at auctions for fabulous sums (the artist’s self-portrait at the Christie’s auction was sold for more than 71 million dollars). As one contemporary critic noted with regret, only now “many have learned to see the world exactly as Van Gogh saw it.”

His whole life is a search for himself. He was both an art dealer and a preacher in a remote village. Many times it seemed to him that his life was over, that he would never find something to do that would reflect his inner needs. When he started painting, he was almost 30 years old.

It would seem, what kind of people XXI century, it's up to some crazy artist? But if you have ever wondered how lonely a person can be in the world, how difficult it is to find your place in life, your business, Van Gogh will be interesting to you not only as “some kind of artist,” but also as an amazing and tragic person.

When a person has a fire burning inside and a soul, he is unable to contain them. It's better to burn than to go out. What's inside will still come out.

Starry Night, 1889

I consider life without love to be a sinful, immoral state.

Self-portrait with a cut off ear, 1889

A man carries a bright flame in his soul, but no one wants to bask near him; passers-by notice only the smoke escaping through the chimney and go on their way.

Blooming almond branch, 1890

As for me, I don’t really know anything, but the shine of the stars makes me dream.

Starry Night over the Rhone, 1888

Even if I manage to raise my head a little higher in life, I will still do the same thing - drink with the first person I meet and immediately write to him.

Van Gogh's chair with his pipe, 1888

In the evening I walked along the deserted seashore. It wasn't funny or sad - it was wonderful.

In the hope that Gauguin and I will have a common workshop, I want to decorate it. Just big sunflowers - nothing more.

Today's generation doesn't want me: well, I don't care about them.

In my opinion, I am often, although not every day, fabulously rich - not in money, but because I find something in my work that I can devote my soul and heart to, that inspires me and gives meaning to my life.

Road with Cypresses and a Star, 1890

Vincent van Gogh's last words: "Sadness will last forever"

The main cause of death of Vincent van Gogh was considered suicide. However, Pulitzer Prize winners Steven Nayfeh and Gregory White Smith conducted research and offered the public an alternative version of death Dutch artist– murder.

Nayfeh and White Smith spent 10 years writing a biography of the outstanding artist, starting with a visit to the archives of the Van Gogh Foundation in Amsterdam in 2001. The more information about the artist’s death was studied, the less believed in his suicide.

The main creator of the version of Van Gogh’s suicide is the artist’s comrade – Emile Bernard, who considered the artist crazy.

Several facts casting doubt on this version:

• A local policeman, who was interviewing the wounded Van Gogh, asked the artist a question: “Have you committed suicide?”, to which the confused artist replied: “I think so...”;

• Residents of the town of Auvers, where the artist spent last days in their lives, they did not hear a shot on the fateful day of Van Gogh's death. No one saw the artist on his dying walk, no one knew where the artist got the gun, and the weapon was never found after the incident;

• Supposedly in 1953, testimony appeared from the son of Paul Gachet, a doctor who was depicted in the famous impressionist portrait. It was Paul Jr. who put forward the idea that the shooting took place in the wheat fields outside Auvers. This theory was later dismissed as "unlikely";

• In 1890, René Secretant, the 16-year-old son of a Parisian pharmacist, found an easy target for ridicule in a strange Dutchman, by then surrounded by all kinds of rumors. The pharmacist's son sat next to the artist in a cafe and mocked him to amuse his friends. Later, Rene Secretan broke his silence, reporting some unknown details of the artist's death. However, the banker denied his participation in the shooting, claiming that “I just provided a pistol that fired once”. Secretan was sure that Van Gogh's death was a matter of chance. No one expected the weapon to fire.

During the research process, Dr. Vincent Di Maio, an outstanding forensic expert with worldwide practice, came to the aid of Nayfeh and Smith. Di Maio studied archival documents according to the testimony of the doctor Paul Gachet, who described in detail the appearance Vincent Wang's wound Goga. The doctor noted that the purple halo of the wound had nothing to do with the proximity of the gun barrel to the artist's body. “In fact, this is subcutaneous bleeding from the vessels, and a “brownish ring” occurs around almost all entry wounds. You might also find powder burns on the artist's palm, since smokeless powder had only recently been developed and was used in only a few military rifles. And the black powder used everywhere would have left obvious marks on the wounds.”

Di Maio's conclusion is: “In all medical probability, Vincent van Gogh could not have inflicted such wounds on his own. In other words, he didn't shoot himself."

During the research conducted by Nayfeh and Smith, the curator of the Van Gogh Museum expressed his opinion regarding the tragic events from the artist's biography. “I think Vincent Van Gogh did it to protect the boys, accepted the “accident” as a way out of a difficult life. But I think the biggest problem you will experience is after publishing your theory. Suicide has become kind of self-evident the truth is the ending stories of a martyr for art. This is Vincent Van Gogh's crown of thorns."

According to sociologists, three artists are the most famous in the world: Leonardo da Vinci, Vincent Van Gogh and Pablo Picasso. Leonardo is “responsible” for the art of the Old Masters, Van Gogh for the impressionists and post-impressionists of the 19th century, and Picasso for the abstract and modernists of the 20th century. Moreover, if Leonardo appears in the eyes of the public not so much as a painter, but as a universal genius, and Picasso as a fashionable “socialite” and a public figure - a fighter for peace, then Van Gogh personifies precisely the artist. He is considered a lone crazy genius and a martyr who did not think about fame and money. However, this image, to which everyone is accustomed, is nothing more than a myth that was used to “promote” Van Gogh and sell his paintings at a profit.

The legend about the artist is based on a true fact - he took up painting when he was already a mature man, and in just ten years he “ran” the path from a novice artist to a master who revolutionized the idea of ​​fine art. All this, even during Van Gogh’s lifetime, was perceived as a “miracle” with no real explanation. The artist’s biography was not replete with adventures, such as the fate of Paul Gauguin, who managed to be both a stockbroker and a sailor, and died of leprosy, exotic for the European man in the street, on the no less exotic Hiva Oa, one of the Marquesas Islands. Van Gogh was a “boring worker”, and, except for the strange mental attacks that appeared in him shortly before his death, and this death itself as a result of a suicide attempt, the myth-makers had nothing to cling to. But these few “trump cards” were played by real masters of their craft.

The main creator of the Legend of the Master was the German gallery owner and art critic Julius Meyer-Graefe. He quickly realized the scale of the great Dutchman’s genius, and most importantly, the market potential of his paintings. In 1893, a twenty-six-year-old gallery owner purchased the painting “A Couple in Love” and started thinking about “advertising” a promising product. Possessing a lively pen, Meyer-Graefe decided to write a biography of the artist that would be attractive to collectors and art lovers. He did not find him alive and therefore was “free” from personal impressions that burdened the master’s contemporaries. In addition, Van Gogh was born and raised in Holland, and finally developed as a painter in France. In Germany, where Meyer-Graefe began to introduce the legend, no one knew anything about the artist, and the gallery owner and art critic started with a “clean slate.” He did not immediately “find” the image of that crazy lone genius that everyone now knows. At first Meyer's Van Gogh was " healthy person from the people”, and his work - “harmony between art and life” and a herald of a new Big style, which Meyer-Graefe considered modernity. But modernism fizzled out in a matter of years, and Van Gogh, under the pen of an enterprising German, “retrained” as an avant-garde rebel who led the fight against mossy academic realists. Van Gogh the anarchist was popular in the circles of artistic bohemia, but scared off the average person. And only the “third edition” of the legend satisfied everyone. In a 1921 “scientific monograph” entitled “Vincent”, with an unusual subtitle for literature of this kind, “The Novel of the God-Seeker,” Meyer-Graefe presented to the public a holy madman whose hand was guided by God. The highlight of this “biography” was the story of a severed ear and creative madness that elevated a small, lonely man like Akaki Akakievich Bashmachkin to the heights of genius.

Vincent Van Gogh. 1873

About the “curvature” of the prototype

The real Vincent van Gogh had little in common with "Vincent" Meyer-Graefe. To begin with, he graduated from a prestigious private gymnasium, spoke and wrote fluently in three languages, read a lot, which earned him the nickname Spinoza in Parisian artistic circles. Van Gogh had a large family behind him, who never left him without support, although they were not happy with his experiments. His grandfather was a renowned bookbinder of ancient manuscripts, working for several European courts, three of his uncles were successful art dealers, and one was an admiral and port master in Antwerp, in his house he lived while studying in that city. The real Van Gogh was a rather sober and pragmatic person.

For example, one of the central “God-seeking” episodes of the “going to the people” legend was the fact that in 1879 Van Gogh was a preacher in the Belgian mining district of Borinage. What Meyer-Graefe and his followers didn’t come up with! Here there is a “break with the environment” and “the desire to suffer along with the wretched and beggars.” Everything is explained simply. Vincent decided to follow in his father's footsteps and become a priest. In order to be ordained, it was necessary to study at the seminary for five years. Or - take an accelerated course in three years at an evangelical school using a simplified program, and even for free. All this was preceded by a mandatory six-month “experience” as a missionary in the outback. So Van Gogh went to the miners. Of course, he was a humanist, tried to help these people, but he did not even think about getting close to them, always remaining a member of the middle class. After serving his sentence in Borinage, Van Gogh decided to enroll in an evangelical school, and then it turned out that the rules had changed and Dutch people like him, unlike the Flemings, had to pay tuition. After this, the offended “missionary” left religion and decided to become an artist.

And this choice is also not accidental. Van Gogh was a professional art dealer - an art dealer in the largest company "Goupil". His partner in it was his uncle Vincent, after whom the young Dutchman was named. He patronized him. Goupil played a leading role in Europe in the trade of old masters and solid modern academic paintings, but was not afraid to sell “moderate innovators” like the Barbizons. For 7 years Van Gogh made a difficult career based on family traditions antique business. From the Amsterdam branch he moved first to The Hague, then to London and finally to the firm's headquarters in Paris. Over the years, the nephew of the co-owner of Goupil went through a serious school, studied the main European museums and many closed private collections, and became a real expert in painting not only by Rembrandt and the small Dutch, but also by the French - from Ingres to Delacroix. “Being surrounded by paintings,” he wrote, “I was inflamed with a frantic love for them, reaching the point of frenzy.” His idol was French artist Jean François Millet, who became famous at that time for his “peasant” paintings, which Goupil sold at prices of tens of thousands of francs.

The artist's brother Theodore Van Gogh

Van Gogh was going to become such a successful “writer of the everyday life of the lower classes” like Millet, using his knowledge of the life of miners and peasants, gleaned from the Borinage. Contrary to legend, art dealer Van Gogh was not a brilliant amateur like such “Sunday artists” as customs officer Rousseau or conductor Pirosmani. Having behind him a fundamental acquaintance with the history and theory of art, as well as with the practice of trading in it, the persistent Dutchman, at the age of twenty-seven, began a systematic study of the craft of painting. He began by drawing using the latest special textbooks, which were sent to him by art dealers from all over Europe. Van Gogh's hand was placed by his relative, the artist from The Hague Anton Mauwe, to whom the grateful student later dedicated one of his paintings. Van Gogh even entered first the Brussels and then the Antwerp Academy of Arts, where he studied for three months until he went to Paris.

The newly-minted artist was persuaded to go there in 1886 by his younger brother Theodore. This former successful art dealer on the rise played key role in the fate of the master. Theo advised Vincent to give up “peasant” painting, explaining that it was already a “plowed field.” And, besides, “black paintings” like “The Potato Eaters” have always sold worse than light and joyful art. Another thing is the “light painting” of the Impressionists, literally created for success: all sunshine and celebration. The public will definitely appreciate it sooner or later.

Theo Seer

So Van Gogh ended up in the capital of the “new art” - Paris and, on Theo’s advice, went to study at private studio Fernana Cormona, who was then the “foundry of talent” for a new generation of experimental artists. There, the Dutchman became close friends with such future pillars of post-impressionism as Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Emile Bernard and Lucien Pissarro. Van Gogh studied anatomy, painted from plaster casts and literally absorbed all the new ideas that were seething in Paris.

Theo introduces him to leading art critics and his artist clients, among whom were not only the established Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro, Auguste Renoir and Edgar Degas, but also the “rising stars” Signac and Gauguin. By the time Vincent arrived in Paris, his brother was the head of the “experimental” branch of Goupil in Montmartre. A man with a keen sense of new things and an excellent businessman, Theo was one of the first to see the advance new era in art. He persuaded the conservative leadership of Gupil to allow him to take the risk of engaging in the trade of “light painting”. In the gallery, Theo held personal exhibitions of Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet and other impressionists, to whom Paris began to gradually get used to. On the floor above, in his own apartment, he arranged “changing exhibitions” of paintings by daring youth, which “Goupil” was afraid to show officially. This was the prototype of the elite “apartment exhibitions” that became fashionable in the 20th century, and Vincent’s works became their highlight.

Back in 1884, the Van Gogh brothers entered into an agreement among themselves. Theo, in exchange for Vincent's paintings, pays him 220 francs a month and provides him with brushes, canvases and paints best quality. By the way, thanks to this, Van Gogh’s paintings, unlike the works of Gauguin and Toulouse-Lautrec, who painted on anything due to lack of money, were so well preserved. 220 francs was a quarter of the monthly salary of a doctor or lawyer. Postman Joseph Roulin in Arles, whom legend made something of a patron of the “beggar” Van Gogh, received half as much and, unlike the lonely artist, fed a family with three children. Van Gogh even had enough money to create a collection of Japanese prints. In addition, Theo supplied his brother with “overall clothes”: blouses and famous hats, necessary books and reproductions. He also paid for Vincent's treatment.

None of this was simple charity. The brothers drew up an ambitious plan - to create a market for paintings by the Post-Impressionists, the generation of artists that replaced Monet and his friends. Moreover, with Vincent Van Gogh as one of the leaders of this generation. Connecting the seemingly incompatible is risky avant-garde art the world of bohemia and commercial success in the spirit of the respectable “Goupil”. Here they were almost a century ahead of their time: only Andy Warhol and other American partyists managed to immediately get rich from avant-garde art.

"Unrecognized"

Overall, Vincent van Gogh's position was unique. He worked as a contract artist for an art dealer, who was one of the key figures in the “light painting” market. And this art dealer was his brother. The restless vagabond Gauguin, for example, could only dream of such a situation. Moreover, Vincent was not a simple puppet in the hands of businessman Theo. Nor was he unmercenary, who did not want to sell his paintings to profane people, which he gave away freely to “kindred souls,” as Meyer-Graefe wrote. Van Gogh, like any normal person, wanted recognition not from distant descendants, but during his lifetime. Confessions important sign which for him was money. And being a former art dealer himself, he knew how to achieve this.

One of the main themes of his letters to Theo is not at all God-seeking, but discussions about what needs to be done in order to profitably sell paintings, and which paintings will quickly find their way to the heart of the buyer. To promote himself on the market, he came up with an impeccable formula: “Nothing will help us sell our paintings better than their recognition as a good decoration for middle-class homes.” To clearly show how Post-Impressionist paintings would “look” in a bourgeois interior, Van Gogh himself organized two exhibitions in the Tambourine cafe and the La Forche restaurant in Paris in 1887 and even sold several works from them. Later, the legend played up this fact as an act of despair of the artist, whom no one wanted to let into normal exhibitions.

Meanwhile, he is a regular participant in exhibitions at the Salon des Indépendants and the Free Theater - the most fashionable places for Parisian intellectuals of that time. His paintings are exhibited by art dealers Arsene Portier, George Thomas, Pierre Martin and Tanguy. The great Cezanne got the opportunity to show his work at a personal exhibition only at the age of 56, after almost four decades of hard labor. While the works of Vincent, an artist with six years of experience, could be seen at any time at Theo’s “apartment exhibition”, where the entire artistic elite of the capital of the art world, Paris, visited.

The real Van Gogh is least like the hermit from the legend. He belongs among the leading artists of the era, the most convincing evidence of which is several portraits of the Dutchman painted by Toulouse-Lautrec, Roussel, and Bernard. Lucien Pissarro depicted him talking with the most influential art critic of those years, Fenelon. Camille Pissarro remembered Van Gogh for the fact that he did not hesitate to stop the person he needed on the street and show his paintings right next to the wall of some house. It is simply impossible to imagine the real hermit Cezanne in such a situation.

The legend firmly established the idea that Van Gogh was unrecognized, that during his lifetime only one of his paintings, “Red Vineyards in Arles,” was sold, which now hangs in the Moscow Museum fine arts named after A.S. Pushkin. In fact, the sale of this painting from an exhibition in Brussels in 1890 for 400 francs was Van Gogh's breakthrough into the world of serious prices. He sold no worse than his contemporaries Seurat or Gauguin. According to documents, it is known that fourteen works were bought from the artist. The first to do so was a family friend, the Dutch art dealer Tersteeg, in February 1882, and Vincent wrote to Theo: “The first sheep has crossed the bridge.” In reality, there were more sales; there is simply no accurate evidence of the rest.

As for unrecognized status, since 1888 famous critics Gustave Kahn and Felix Fenelon, in their reviews of “independent” exhibitions, as the avant-garde artists were called then, highlight the fresh and vibrant works of Van Gogh. The critic Octave Mirbeau advised Rodin to buy his paintings. They were in the collection of such a discerning connoisseur as Edgar Degas. During his lifetime, Vincent read in the Mercure de France newspaper that he was a great artist, the heir of Rembrandt and Hals. I wrote this in my entire article dedicated to creativity“the amazing Dutchman”, the rising star of the “new criticism” Henri Aurier. He intended to create a biography of Van Gogh, but unfortunately died of tuberculosis shortly after the death of the artist himself.

About the mind free “from shackles”

But Meyer-Graefe published a “biography”, and in it he especially described the “intuitive, free from the shackles of reason” process of Van Gogh’s creativity.

“Vincent painted in a blind, unconscious rapture. His temperament spilled out onto the canvas. The trees screamed, the clouds hunted each other. The sun gaped like a blinding hole leading to chaos.”

The easiest way to refute this idea of ​​​​Van Gogh is in the words of the artist himself: “Great is created not only by impulsive action, but also by the complicity of many things that were brought to a single whole... With art, as with everything else: great is not something sometimes random, but must be created by persistent willpower.”

The vast majority of Van Gogh’s letters are devoted to issues of the “kitchen” of painting: setting tasks, materials, technique. The case is almost unprecedented in the history of art. The Dutchman was a real workaholic and argued: “In art you have to work like several blacks and peel off your skin.” At the end of his life, he really painted very quickly; he could complete a painting from start to finish in two hours. But at the same time he kept repeating his favorite expression American artist Whistler: “I did it in two hours, but I worked for years to do something worthwhile in those two hours.”

Van Gogh did not write on a whim - he worked long and hard on the same motif. In the city of Arles, where he set up his workshop after leaving Paris, he began a series of 30 works connected by the common creative task of “Contrast”. Contrast in color, thematic, composition. For example, pandan "Cafe in Arles" and "Room in Arles". In the first picture there is darkness and tension, in the second there is light and harmony. In the same row there are several variants of his famous “Sunflowers”. The entire series was conceived as an example of decorating a “middle class home.” We have thoughtful creative and market strategies from start to finish. After looking at his paintings at the “independent” exhibition, Gauguin wrote: “You are the only thinking artist of all.”

The cornerstone of the Van Gogh legend is his madness. Allegedly, only it allowed him to look into such depths that are inaccessible to mere mortals. But the artist was not half-mad with flashes of genius from his youth. Periods of depression, accompanied by seizures similar to epilepsy, for which he was treated in a psychiatric clinic, began only in the last year and a half of his life. Doctors saw this as the effect of absinthe, an alcoholic drink infused with wormwood, whose destructive effect on the nervous system became known only in the 20th century. Moreover, it was precisely during the period of exacerbation of the disease that the artist could not write. So mental disorder did not “help” Van Gogh’s genius, but hindered it.

Very doubtful famous story with an ear. It turned out that Van Gogh could not cut it off at the root, he would simply bleed to death, because he was given help only 10 hours after the incident. Only his lobe was cut off, as stated in the medical report. And who did it? There is a version that this happened during a quarrel with Gauguin that took place that day. Experienced in sailor fights, Gauguin slashed Van Gogh in the ear, and he had a nervous attack from the whole experience. Later, to justify his behavior, Gauguin made up a story that Van Gogh, in a fit of madness, chased him with a razor in his hands, and then injured himself.

Even the painting “Room in Arles,” whose curved space was considered to capture Van Gogh’s insane state, turned out to be surprisingly realistic. Plans were found for the house in which the artist lived in Arles. The walls and ceiling of his home were indeed sloping. Van Gogh never painted by moonlight with candles attached to his hat. But the creators of the legend always handled facts freely. For example, they declared the ominous painting “Wheat Field”, with a road stretching into the distance covered by a flock of ravens, to be the master’s last painting, predicting his death. But it is well known that after it he wrote more a whole series works where the ill-fated field is depicted as compressed.

The “know-how” of the main author of the Van Gogh myth, Julius Meyer-Graeff, is not just a lie, but a presentation of fictitious events mixed with genuine facts, and even in the form of an impeccable scientific work. For example, a true fact - Van Gogh loved to work under open air because he could not stand the smell of turpentine, which is used to dilute paints, - the “biographer” used it as the basis for a fantastic version of the reason for the master’s suicide. Allegedly, Van Gogh fell in love with the sun, the source of his inspiration, and did not allow himself to cover his head with a hat while standing under its burning rays. All his hair burned off, the sun burned his unprotected skull, he went crazy and committed suicide. In Van Gogh's late self-portraits and images of the dead by the artist, made by his friends, it is clear that he did not lose any hair on his head until his death.

"Epiphanies of the Holy Fool"

Van Gogh shot himself on July 27, 1890, after his mental crisis seemed to have been overcome. Shortly before this, he was discharged from the clinic with the conclusion: “Recovered.” The very fact that the owner of the furnished rooms in Auvers, where Van Gogh lived in recent months of his life, he entrusted him with a revolver, which the artist needed to scare away crows while working on sketches, suggests that he behaved absolutely normally. Today, doctors agree that suicide did not occur during a seizure, but was the result of a confluence of external circumstances. Theo got married, had a child, and Vincent was depressed by the thought that his brother would only be concerned with his family, and not with their plan to conquer the art world.

After the fatal shot, Van Gogh lived for two more days, was surprisingly calm and steadfastly endured suffering. He died in the arms of his inconsolable brother, who was never able to recover from this loss and died six months later. The Goupil company sold for next to nothing all the works of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists that Theo Van Gogh had accumulated in a gallery in Montmartre, and closed the experiment with “light painting”. Theo's widow Johanna Van Gogh-Bonger took Vincent van Gogh's paintings to Holland. Only at the beginning of the 20th century did the great Dutchman achieve total fame. According to experts, if not for the almost simultaneous early death of both brothers, this would have happened back in the mid-1890s and Van Gogh would have been a very rich man. But fate decreed otherwise. People like Meyer-Graefe began to reap the fruits of the labors of the great painter Vincent and the great gallery owner Theo.

Who did Vincent possess?

The novel about the God-seeker “Vincent” by an enterprising German came in handy in the context of the collapse of ideals after the massacre of the First World War. A martyr to art and a madman, whose mystical creativity appeared under the pen of Meyer-Graefe as something like a new religion, this Van Gogh captured the imagination of both jaded intellectuals and unsophisticated ordinary people. The legend pushed into the background not only the biography of the real artist, but also distorted the idea of ​​his paintings. They were seen as some kind of mishmash of colors, in which the prophetic “insights” of the holy fool were discerned. Meyer-Graefe turned into the main connoisseur of the “mystical Dutchman” and began not only to trade in Van Gogh’s paintings, but also to issue certificates of authenticity for large sums of money for works that appeared under Van Gogh’s name on the art market.

In the mid-1920s, a certain Otto Wacker came to him, performing erotic dances in Berlin cabarets under the pseudonym Olinto Lovel. He showed several paintings signed "Vincent", painted in the spirit of the legend. Meyer-Graefe was delighted and immediately confirmed their authenticity. In total, Wacker, who opened his own gallery in the fashionable Potsdamerplatz district, put more than 30 Van Goghs on the market until rumors spread that they were fake. Since the amount involved was very large, the police intervened in the matter. At the trial, the dancer-gallery owner told a tale of “provenance”, which he “fed” his gullible clients. He allegedly purchased the paintings from a Russian aristocrat, who bought them at the beginning of the century, and during the revolution managed to take them from Russia to Switzerland. Vacker did not mention his name, arguing that the Bolsheviks, embittered by the loss of the “national treasure,” would destroy the aristocrat’s family remaining in Soviet Russia.

In the battle of experts that unfolded in April 1932 in the courtroom of the Berlin district of Moabit, Meyer-Graefe and his supporters stood strongly for the authenticity of the Wacker Van Goghs. But the police raided the studio of the dancer’s brother and father, who were artists, and found 16 brand-new Van Goghs. Technological examination showed that they are identical to the sold paintings. In addition, chemists found that when creating the “paintings of the Russian aristocrat,” paints were used that appeared only after Van Gogh’s death. Upon learning of this, one of the “experts” who supported Meyer-Graefe and Wacker said to the stunned judge: “How do you know that after his death Vincent did not inhabit a congenial body and is not still creating?”

Wacker received three years in prison, and Meyer-Graefe's reputation was destroyed. He soon died, but the legend, despite everything, continues to live to this day. It is on this basis American writer Irving Stone wrote his best-selling book Lust for Life in 1934, and Hollywood director Vincente Minnelli made a film about Van Gogh in 1956. The role of the artist was played by actor Kirk Douglas. The film earned an Oscar and finally established in the minds of millions of people the image of a half-mad genius who took upon himself all the sins of the world. Then the American period in the canonization of Van Gogh gave way to the Japanese.

In the Country rising sun Thanks to legend, the great Dutchman began to be considered something between a Buddhist monk and a samurai who committed hara-kiri. In 1987, the Yasuda company bought Van Gogh's Sunflowers at an auction in London for $40 million. Three years later, eccentric billionaire Ryoto Saito, who associated himself with the Vincent of legend, paid $82 million at an auction in New York for Van Gogh's Portrait of Doctor Gachet. For a whole decade it was the most expensive painting in the world. According to Saito’s will, she was supposed to be burned with him after his death, but the creditors of the Japanese man, who was bankrupt by that time, did not allow this to happen.

While the world was rocked by scandals surrounding the name of Van Gogh, art historians, restorers, archivists and even doctors, step by step, explored the true life and work of the artist. A huge role in this was played by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, created in 1972 on the basis of the collection that was given to Holland by Theo Van Gogh’s son, who bore the name of his great uncle. The museum began checking all Van Gogh’s paintings in the world, weeding out several dozen fakes, and did a great job of preparing scientific publication correspondence between brothers.

But, despite the enormous efforts of both the museum staff and such luminaries of Van Gogh studies as the Canadian Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharova or the Dutchman Jan Halsker, the legend of Van Gogh does not die. It lives its own life, giving rise to new films, books and performances about the “mad saint Vincent”, who has nothing in common with the great worker and pioneer of new paths in art, Vincent Van Gogh. This is how a person works: a romantic fairy tale is always more attractive to him than the “prose of life,” no matter how great it may be.

The life, death and work of Vincent van Gogh have been studied quite well. Dozens of books and monographs have been written about the great Dutchman, hundreds of dissertations have been defended and several films have been made. Despite this, researchers are constantly finding new facts from the artist’s life. Recently, researchers have questioned the canonical version of the suicide of a genius and put forward their own version.

Van Gogh biography researchers Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith believe that the artist did not commit suicide, but was the victim of an accident. Scientists came to this conclusion after conducting extensive search work and studying many documents and memories of eyewitnesses and friends of the artist.

Gregory White Smith and Steve Knife

Nayfi and White Smith compiled their work in the form of a book called “Van Gogh. Life". Work on new biography Dutch artist took more than 10 years, despite the fact that the scientists were actively assisted by 20 researchers and translators.

In Auvers-sur-Oise the memory of the artist is carefully preserved

It is known that Van Gogh died in a hotel small town Auvers-sur-Oise, located 30 km from Paris. It was believed that on July 27, 1890, the artist went for a walk through the picturesque surroundings, during which he shot himself in the heart area. The bullet did not reach the target and went lower, so the wound, although serious, did not lead to immediate death.

Vincent van Gogh "Wheat field with reaper and sun." Saint-Rémy, September 1889

The wounded Van Gogh returned to his room, where the hotel owner called a doctor. The next day, Theo, the artist’s brother, arrived in Auvers-sur-Oise, in whose arms he died on July 29, 1890, at 1.30 a.m., 29 hours after the fatal shot. The last words Van Gogh spoke were “La tristesse durera toujours” (Sadness will last forever).

Auvers-sur-Oise. Tavern "Ravu" on the second floor of which the great Dutchman died

But according to research by Steven Knife, Van Gogh went for a walk around wheat fields on the outskirts of Auvers-sur-Oise not at all in order to take his own life.

“People who knew him believed he was accidentally killed by a couple of local teenagers, but he decided to protect them and took the blame.”

Nayfi thinks so, citing numerous references to this strange story by eyewitnesses. Did the artist have a weapon? Most likely it was, since Vincent once acquired a revolver to scare away flocks of birds, which often prevented him from drawing from life in nature. But no one can say with certainty whether Van Gogh took a weapon with him that day.

The tiny closet where Vincent van Gogh spent his last days, in 1890 and now

The version of careless murder was first put forward in 1930 by John Renwald, a famous researcher of the painter’s biography. Renwald visited the town of Auvers-sur-Oise and spoke with several residents who still remembered the tragic incident.

John was also able to access the medical records of the doctor who examined the wounded man in his room. According to the description of the wound, the bullet entered the abdominal cavity in the upper part along a trajectory close to a tangent, which is not at all typical for cases when a person shoots himself.

The graves of Vincent and his brother Theo, who outlived the artist by only six months

In the book, Stephen Knife puts forward a very convincing version of what happened, in which his young acquaintances became the culprits in the death of the genius.

“The two teenagers were known to often go drinking with Vincent at that time of day. One of them had a cowboy suit and a faulty pistol with which he played cowboy.”

The scientist believes that careless handling of the weapon, which was also faulty, led to an involuntary shot, which killed Van Gogh in the stomach. It is unlikely that the teenagers wanted the death of their older friend - most likely, it was a murder due to negligence. The noble artist, not wanting to ruin the lives of the young men, took the blame upon himself, and ordered the boys to keep quiet.