Arts and scenes - The mystery of the last hours of Van Gogh finally elucidated

On Tuesday July 28, on the occasion of the 130th anniversary of the death of Vincent Van Gogh, the Van Gogh Institute unveiled a major discovery around the end of the artist's life. The official announcement took place at 11 a.m. in situ, that is to say at the Auberge Ravoux in Auvers-sur-Oise, in Val-d'Oise. In particular were present his great-grand-nephew, Vincent-Willem Van Gogh, the director of the Museum of Amsterdam, the president of the Van Gogh Foundation of Arles, the ambassador of the Netherlands in Paris, the mayor of Auvers and the president of the county council.

“I finally know where and how Vincent Van Gogh spent his last day. A stubborn mystery is lifted. I spent hours checking”, confided to us on July 15 Wouter Van der Veen, secretary general and scientific director of the Van Gogh Institute, a world-renowned specialist who, for ten years, was part of the team of researchers having examined the correspondence within the framework of its complete and critical edition published at the end of 2009.

Sitting at the Auberge Ravoux, he continues: “At the end of March, I was cloistered at home, confined. To occupy myself, I stored my files on my computer. A few months earlier, I had scanned two dozen postcards of Auvers dating from the 1900s and 1910s. on a road, whose embankment was covered with roots, trunks and trees. All of a sudden, something clicked. I brought to the screen what has been considered since 2012 to be Van Gogh's last painting. This hillside overlooking the garden of the current Daubigny Museum: it was the motif of “Racines”, painted twenty years earlier!”

In the painter's usual circuit

The days following this intuition are devoted to clearing the site and a photo campaign on site. Digitally corrected angle, the vegetable entanglement corresponds by six points to the composition. The shafts and stumps of glabrous elm or acacia have the same bends, the same swellings, the same expressive complex structure. This even if some plants were cut between 1890, when the road was simply called Grande Rue, and 1900-1910. As for the rock that outcrops in touches of pale yellow in the lower part of the painting, it refers to the blond limestone that has long been excavated here.

The hypothesis was submitted to the curators of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, an authority on the subject, who had it studied by a dendrologist before validating it five weeks later. On site, stripped of its ivy, the twisting root that served as the model for the shape in blue in the center left of the painting turns out to have once been well known in the area. "We nicknamed it the elephant because of its shape vaguely resembling the animal", testifies a neighbor owner of the land, happy with the discovery.

Right against the copse winds a path. It still currently offers a shortcut to access the first fields of the Auvers plateau. It fits perfectly into the usual circuit of the painter. The one that left the Auberge Ravoux 150 meters away and returned there, passing by the town hall, the church, the house of Doctor Gachet and the countryside. Whether it was the 300,000 annual visitors who, before confinement, took this loop as a pilgrimage or the many specialists who studied it, everyone had passed by this mass of greenery without noticing that the curved road here offered enough distance to plant an easel.

To prevent the roots, which have become relics, from being stolen, a temporary structure has been installed to hide the shoulder. On these wooden panels there is still no information, just a few quotes from Van Gogh inscribed in "teasing". Soon, a permanent protection will be built, allowing to see the embankment with a reproduction of the painting, in the manner of what has already been done in Auvers in front of the sites painted by the Dutchman.

With this discovery, Wouter Van der Veen confirms the thesis of suicide. Certainly, it was already well supported. In addition to the famous mutilation of his left ear, Van Gogh had several times attempted his own life during his year at the Saint-Rémy-de-Provence sanatorium. Four major crises are documented there. Later, in a letter to Théo, his brother, dated July 10, 1890, the great depressive confided that his life was “attacked at the very root”.

Invalidated fantasies

By uncovering the “Roots” motif, the historian invalidates a number of fantasies, starting with those of assassination or manslaughter. In 2011, a couple of American researchers had defended in a thick book the thesis that Van Gogh would have been injured by a more or less accidental shooting of two teenagers who had been playing with a weapon or looking for trouble for him for weeks. This scenario has flourished. It was taken up in "The Van Gogh Passion", an entirely hand-painted feature film released in 2017, and the following year by Julian Schnabel for his film "At Eternity's Gate", with Willem Dafoe.

Finally, Wouter Van der Veen weakens the idea that the revolver exhibited by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam in 2016, acquired a year ago by a private individual for 162,500 euros at the Hôtel Drouot, would be “ the suicide weapon” (title of a book on the subject written in 2013 by Alain Rohan). When a cultivator discovered the object in 1960, before handing it over to the inn's previous owner, it was believed to have been found at the artist's last working location. Following Hollywood and Vincente Minnelli's biopic with Kirk Douglas, it was believed that the ultimate painting was "Wheatfield with Crows" and not "Roots".

“This small caliber, 7 mm Lefaucheux, model of 1865, was very common at the time,” says Wouter Van der Veen. “It cost 5 francs, the equivalent of two nights at the Auberge Ravoux. A magazine even offered it as a welcome gift to its subscribers. In short, almost everyone had one…

The proximity of the hillside to the inn explains more logically how, after being fatally lodged by a bullet in his lung, Van Gogh was able to regain his room alone, the mythical nº 5, a 7m^{2 attic} lit by a simple skylight and now empty. The genius died there after two days of agony.

The day of the suicide?

He left there in particular "Roots", his last canvas after "Wheat field with crows", where we see that the said wheat is still standing and not harvested as this is the case with other works. This testamentary character was ratified in 2012 by the Museum of Amsterdam, where the work is kept. The institution bases itself for this on the testimony of Andries Bonger, Theo's brother-in-law, according to which the composition dates from the day of the suicide. It would have been started in the morning and then continued, after lunch at the inn, until around 6 p.m. on July 27, 1890. This is indicated by the direction of the shadows. Note that it was very hot that day. The curved configuration of the small road could have been chosen by Van Gogh not only for its original motif but also because he could work there in the cool.

“Symbolically, “Roots”, probably the most daring oil of all periods, connotes death but also the struggle for life so often described by the artist. It also speaks of the beauty of nature and the simplicity of things,” comments Dominique-Charles Janssens, president of the Van Gogh Institute, passionately.

Due to the pandemic, the Auberge Ravoux, both a small museum and a restaurant, is closed to the general public throughout this season. In 2023, the Amsterdam Museum and the Orsay Museum will jointly organize an exhibition focusing on the seventy days spent by the artist in Auvers. "Attacked at the root", by Wouter Van der Veen, Arthénon 127 p., 15 euros

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