The Mayor of Arles and the Head of Medicine at the Hôtel-Dieu, who needed to sign Vincent’s committal papers, returned to work on 2 January after the New Year’s Day holiday. Although the official Certificate of Mental Disturbance was written, it was never actually signed. Nor is there any evidence of the mayor having signed the customary Order of Transfer to the asylum in Aix-en-Provence, though this, too, was drawn up.1 These documents were put aside because the patient had made a miraculous recovery. Joseph Roulin sent a telegram and letter to Theo on 3 January 1889, declaring of Vincent, ‘he’s better than he was before this unfortunate incident happened’ and that ‘he is in a very healthy state of mind’.2 This joyous news was confirmed by Van Gogh himself, who wrote to his brother about how much better he was feeling: ‘I’ll stay here at the hospital for another few days then plan to return home very calmly. Now I ask just one thing of you, not to worry, for that would cause me one worry TOO MANY.’3
Although he had not yet been released from hospital, on 4 January Vincent was allowed to return to the Yellow House for a short visit, for the first time since 24 December. Roulin wrote to Theo, ‘he was pleased to see his pictures again, we spent four hours together, he’s completely cured, it’s really surprising’.4 Roulin’s letter is light and positive, but it must have been a strange experience for Van Gogh to go back to the scene of his crisis. Without Roulin there to support and comfort him, his visit to his home might have been quite different. Since the police had entered the Yellow House on Christmas Eve it had remained untouched. There was still blood-spattering on the walls, soiled rags littering the ground floor, and upstairs Vincent’s bedding was heavily stained with blood.5
Theo, Vincent and Dr Rey all played down the violent incident, regarding it only as a temporary moment of insanity, ‘a personal matter’,6 Vincent told Dr Rey. There was never any investigation or discussion – or at least none was documented – of why Van Gogh cut off his ear. Today any sensible doctor would have mental-health specialists at Vincent’s bedside immediately probing for reasons, but in 1888 the doctors were happy to see him recovered and delved no further. Once the initial crisis had passed, Vincent sent off a series of letters to Theo, his mother and sister, acknowledging that he had had a breakdown, yet minimising its importance. He was more concerned about the inconvenience that his illness had caused, especially to Theo: ‘I am, my dear brother, so heartbroken by your journey, I would have wished that you’d been spared that, for all in all no harm has come to me, and it wasn’t worth troubling you.’7
In the very first letter Vincent sent Theo after his recovery, he expressed concern about Gauguin. ‘Now let’s talk about our friend Gauguin, did I terrify him? In short, why doesn’t he send me any news? He must have left with you … perhaps he’ll feel more at home in Paris than here. Tell Gauguin to write to me, and that I’m still thinking of him.’8 Van Gogh clearly still saw him as a close friend, as is evident from a letter to Gauguin in early January:
I’m taking advantage of my first trip out of the hospital to write you a few most sincere and profound words of friendship. I have thought of you a great deal in the hospital, and even in the midst of fever and relative weakness … Trust that in fact no evil exists in this best of worlds, where everything is always for the best. So I want you … to refrain from saying bad things about our poor little yellow house until more mature reflection on either side. Please reply.9
It’s clear from the tone of Van Gogh’s letter how fragile he still feels. He wants reassurance, he wants a show of friendship, that all is not irrevocably lost after suffering such intense difficulties together. Other than admonishing him for calling Theo to Arles, Vincent didn’t have a negative word to say and quoted Voltaire – ‘Trust that in fact no evil exists in this best of worlds’ – as a note of hope.10
To his mother and sister, Vincent played down his illness still further, even implying that his hospitalisation might be a good opportunity to find new clients. ‘I … will probably get several portraits to do.’ Whether it was in desperate hope or denial, Van Gogh was trying to paint his breakdown as something so trifling that ‘it wasn’t worth telling you about’.11
On 7 January, Vincent was finally allowed to leave the Hôtel-Dieu, after spending more than two weeks there. He celebrated by going out to dinner with Joseph Roulin, who wrote to both Theo and his sister that Vincent was back home and feeling fine.12 Vincent continued to play down the importance of the episode: ‘How I regret that you were troubled for such a little thing, forgive me,’ he wrote to Theo.13 But it was impossible to move on as easily as Vincent would have liked.
Once back in the Yellow House, he was plagued by sleeplessness, and when he finally did manage to rest he was haunted by hideous nightmares. ‘The most FEARSOME thing is the insomnia, and the doctor didn’t talk to me about it, nor have I spoken to him about it yet. But I’m fighting it myself … I was very fearful of sleeping alone in the house, and I felt anxious that I wouldn’t be able to sleep.’ Van Gogh went on: ‘My suffering … in the hospital was appalling, and yet in the midst of it all, though I was really low, I can tell you that strangely I kept thinking about Degas.’14 He then asked Theo to tell Degas, who had long been a role model for Vincent, that ‘he mustn’t believe Gauguin if Gauguin says good things too soon about my work, which has only been done under the influence of illness’.15
Vincent’s main concern was to get back to a normal routine – to eat, paint and sleep – but within days he had a visit that put him ill at ease; he felt it of sufficient importance to tell Theo: ‘I’ve just been told that in my absence the owner of my house here apparently made a contract with a fellow who has a tobacco shop, to turn me out and give him, the tobacconist, the house.’16
Despite continually playing down his breakdown and minimising the extent of his injury to others, Van Gogh couldn’t ignore what had happened. Upon his return to his studio he completed two canvases: Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe and Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear – possibly the most haunting images in his oeuvre. There is no shred of self-pity or melodrama: he looks straight out from the canvas at the viewer, unnervingly steady. Vincent was not only acknowledging in paint what he had done – his own particular way of expressing emotional experience – but he was also recording his self-harm.
I have my own reasons to interpret these self-portraits in this way. Many years ago as a young woman I had a major, life-saving operation that changed my life utterly. There was the ‘before’ – a carefree time in my life – and the ‘after’, as my existence is still dictated by the constraints of a chronic health condition. While in intensive care I secretly took a photograph of my wound, as a memento of what had taken place. I have never shown this photo to anyone; it is my own personal souvenir. I believe Vincent painted these works for the same reason: he found it necessary to bear witness to this momentous episode in his life.
These two iconic self-portraits are held in galleries in London and Switzerland, yet I was lucky enough to see both works within a few days of one another. Standing in front of these paintings and studying them carefully, in the light of finding Dr Rey’s drawing, helped me understand many things about Van Gogh’s injury.
Both self-portraits show Vincent wearing the same outfit: a woollen or felt hat lined with fur, which he bought soon after leaving the hospital, a white shirt and a heavy winter jacket or coat – almost certainly a shepherd’s cape. This traditional Provençal shepherd’s dress is fastened by one large button and would have kept Vincent warm, while giving him the necessary freedom of movement to paint.
In both self-portraits a large swab covers the whole of the left ear. It is held in place by a bandage that runs under the jaw, over the head and around the neck. By 1888 this style of bandaging was part of any young doctor’s training and could be found in Sir William Watson Cheyne’s book on antiseptic surgical techniques. Cheyne was a colleague and close collaborator of Joseph Lister, who had invented the oil-silk dressing that Dr Rey used on Vincent’s wound.
Bandaging for a head wound, 1882
The paintings demonstrate that three to four weeks after the incident Vincent was still sporting a significant bandage, yet the bandaging differs in the two pictures. After seeing the paintings I consulted Dr Philippe Jeay, who worked for many years in the Accident and Emergency department at Marseille hospital. I thought that Vincent had perhaps been sleeping on the dressing for a few days when he painted Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe – the wadding is messy and the bandaging seems to be coming undone. Dr Jeay had a different point of view. He pointed out that the dressing is considerably bulkier in this portrait and felt it was probably executed earlier in his treatment, when Van Gogh would have needed thicker padding to soak up the blood or any suppuration from infection. In the Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear in the Courtauld Institute in London, Van Gogh’s bandaging is much more streamlined and fits closer to his head.
Dr Jeay told me that nowadays it would take about fifteen to twenty days for such a severe injury to heal, longer depending on the overall health and age of the patient. Vincent was young, just thirty-five years old, but had already experienced several health issues – the loss of ten teeth and venereal disease – which would have an impact on his immune system and therefore on the healing process. He had also lost a lot of blood. ‘The risk of infection would be the principal danger with this type of injury,’ Dr Jeay told me. Bearing in mind the insalubrious conditions at Arles’ hospital in the nineteenth century, it is highly probable that Vincent did have some form of infection. In his letter to Gauguin of 4 January he mentioned that he had had a fever while at the hospital.17 With no antibiotics available, a high temperature from infection would help to explain Vincent’s insomnia and hallucinatory nightmares. In Dr Jeay’s opinion, his injury would almost certainly have taken longer to heal if it was infected, between three weeks and a month, which is the recorded length of Vincent’s active treatment.
Over the last century these portraits have been the subject of much debate amongst art ctitics. It has been argued that one of them might be a fake. I was unaware of this at first, especially as the Van Gogh Museum does not doubt the authenticity of either self-portrait. However, a number of questions have been raised which have created lively discussion amongst the cognoscenti of the art world. Why would he paint himself twice with a bandaged ear? It has also been difficult to marry the extent of the injury – if Signac’s lobe theory is to be believed – with the time needed to finish both portraits. In his letter to Theo on 17 January, Vincent mentioned that he had bought a hat – most likely the one seen in both paintings. But the colour of the fur trim in the two canvases seems quite different. In the Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear the fur is completely black, while in the Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe it appears to be dark blue. In the portrait with the pipe he is sitting against a background of red and orange, which doesn’t bear any relation to the known interior decoration of the Yellow House. In the Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear he is sitting in front of a Japanese print. This detail has added weight to its authenticity, because Vincent was known to have had this print in his collection.18 The main issue with the Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe is that it was owned at one point by Gauguin’s friend Émile Schuffenecker, who reputedly created fake Van Goghs after the artist’s death.
In February 1998 the fine-art journalist Geraldine Norman summarised the discussion among Van Gogh scholars concerning these two paintings in an essay about fakes for the New York Review of Books:
Annet Tellegen says that the Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear in the Courtauld Gallery, London, is an ‘absolute fraud’. The portrait, complete with bandage is, she says, copied from a similar picture owned by the Niarchos family [Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe]. The copyist has omitted the pipe in Vincent’s mouth, but not unpursed his lips, while the studio background does not tally with the Yellow House where Vincent lived. Benoit Landais says the picture is perfectly genuine. Ronald Pickvance says he thinks it is genuine on Mondays and a fake on Tuesdays.19
The article provides no clear conclusion about the authenticity of one or other painting. Scientific study helps to weed out fakes and forgeries, yet only detailed analysis of the quality, age and type of paint, canvas and brushstrokes can prove this beyond doubt. Paint ages differently, depending on the life of the canvas since the artist laid down his or her brushes: heat conditions, light, humidity and dust, for example, can all discolour an artwork. Varnishing helps to protect the pigments but Van Gogh – like many late nineteenth-century painters, and especially the Impressionists – rarely used varnish as it tended to muddy the colours. Recent analysis of paint used by Van Gogh has shown that the colours on many of his canvases would have looked very different to him in 1889 from how they look to us in the twenty-first century. This is particularly significant in the case of these two self-portraits. Ageing differently, in two different locations and climatic conditions, has radically changed their appearance, but only one of these self-portraits has been subject to the full barrage of modern testing procedures. A scientific study of the Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear was undertaken by the Courtauld Gallery and the Van Gogh Museum in 2009. Interestingly, it revealed that the black fur seen on the hat in the Courtauld portrait has discloured with age and in fact it was originally a deep blue, akin to that seen in the Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe in Switzerland.20
I have come to the conclusion that these portraits were painted at least a week apart: the first as soon as Van Gogh returned to the Yellow House, and the second just prior to his final dressing being removed. I believe the first of these works to be completed was Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe. Van Gogh looks haggard and drawn and his bandaging is bulky and thick. On 9 January, Vincent wrote to Theo, ‘This morning I went to the hospital again to have my wound dressed’, so he probably painted this between 7 and 8 January 1889, immediately upon his return from hospital.21
In the second bandaged-ear portrait Vincent is sitting close to the door that opened onto the stairwell of the Yellow House. Behind him on the wall is a copy of the Japanese print Geishas in a Landscape by Sato Torakiyo, which was part of Vincent’s collection of Japanese art.22 His face appears more rested and the bandage lies flat against the ear. On 17 January, Vincent mentioned to Theo that he had finished a self-portrait – likely to be this painting. According to my calculations, based on Lister’s recommendation of changing the dressing every five to six days, Vincent’s last visit to the hospital to have his wound checked and his dressing changed was on 13 January and the bandage was finally removed on 17 January.23 The flatter dressing dates this painting to a week after the Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe – so on, or around, 15 January 1889. The discovery of Dr Rey’s drawing conclusively shows that Van Gogh’s injury was very severe, more severe than had previously been thought. This information, along with the new information concerning the treatment he received, reinforces the argument that both paintings are genuine. With those extra days needed for healing from such a serious wound, Van Gogh easily had enough time to paint the two self-portraits after he returned from hospital.24 These self-portraits have a special resonance amongst Van Gogh’s works: he is at his most intimate at the lowest moment in his life and struggling to come to terms with precisely what he had done.
* * *
Van Gogh’s breakdown had more than just a heavy emotional cost; his medical treatment had not come cheap: ten francs – half a month’s rent – was paid to the nurses for his treatment around the middle of January.25 Based on this expense and Lister’s recommendations, it would appear that the oil-silk dressings probably cost around two francs apiece and there were extra expenses related to his breakdown. This list, noted in a letter to Theo, makes for very sad reading. There were charges for cleaning the house, laundering blood-stained bedding and linens, buying new brushes, clothes and shoe repair. Did Vincent rip up his clothes and trash his home during his breakdown? The list would certainly imply something of this sort, and further accentuates the mayhem at the Yellow House on 23 December that Gauguin described in his notebook.
Alongside the self-portraits, there is another painting that acts as a valuable and telling piece of evidence in the aftermath of Van Gogh’s breakdown. Still Life with Drawing Board, Pipe, Onions and Sealing-Wax, also painted in early January 1889, seemingly depicts a few random everyday objects from the Yellow House. Apart from the pipe, onions and sealing wax of its title, there is also a letter and a book on the table. The book is a medical dictionary and shows that Vincent was likely trying to come to terms with his illness. However, the most interesting detail in this painting is the envelope placed on the table. The Van Gogh Museum’s Letters project showed that this letter bore the franking in use over the Christmas period in 1888 and was sent from a postbox close to Theo’s apartment in Montmartre.26 The fact that Vincent chose to include this letter in one of his first paintings on returning to his studio would suggest the message contained within was of some importance. In an article in 2010, Martin Bailey concluded that the envelope is almost certainly the announcement of Theo’s engagement to Jo Bonger.27 The postal service in Arles made four deliveries every single day, but only one brought mail from Paris, which was distributed after 11 a.m.28 Theo proposed to Jo on the evening of 21 December and, even if he informed his brother straight away, it would have been too late to catch the last post for Arles. Vincent couldn’t have received Theo’s letter as early as the 11 a.m. post on 22 December, so he heard about his brother’s forthcoming marriage on Sunday 23 December, the day of his breakdown.
Since moving to Arles and installing himself – and Gauguin – in the Yellow House, Vincent’s future was bound up in his dream of an artistic brotherhood in Arles, a future entirely reliant on his brother’s goodwill and financial backing. As Bailey surmised, Vincent knew that marriage for Theo meant that children would likely follow; supporting a family was much more costly than supporting a single man in Paris, and Theo would suddenly have far less disposable income to finance Vincent or other painters in Arles. Receiving this news on the very day Gauguin announced he was leaving had to have been devastating for Van Gogh. His vision of the studio of the south now seemed completely impossible. What was his future, if not this? I think these three paintings from January 1889, less than a month after Vincent’s breakdown, show a mind fervently trying to come to terms with loss.
On 17 January he wrote to Theo that he had completed three studies and a portrait of Dr Rey.29 Vincent would probably have painted this last canvas on his final visit to have his wound dressed, probably on 13 January. Van Gogh admired the young doctor and the two men had become close. There are faint traces of decorative motifs in Dr Rey’s office even today. This highly patterned background in Dr Rey’s portrait is significant; it was a device he used repeatedly in portraits of people he was fond of – those of Joseph and Augustine Roulin, and Eugène Boch.30
Due to the severe loss of blood, Van Gogh had suffered from anaemia since his injury and Dr Rey recommended that he build up his strength by eating more regularly and avoiding stimulants. But since leaving the doctor’s care, the artist had been struggling both physically and mentally. In the middle of January there was a cold snap that lasted for ten days, with snow falling on 22 January.31 ‘I’m still very weak,’ he wrote to Theo, ‘and I’ll have difficulty in regaining my strength if the cold continues. Rey will give me some quinine wine, which I dare believe will have some effect.’32 This letter was written two days after another letter from Vincent. ‘As to answering all your questions, can you do it yourself, at the moment I don’t feel up to it … my paintings are worthless, they cost me an extraordinary amount, it’s true, perhaps sometimes even in blood and brain.’ Theo must have been worried yet Vincent still tried to play down his distress: ‘So this time again there’s no more serious harm than a little more suffering and relative anguish. And I retain all good hope. But I feel weak and a little anxious and fearful. Which will pass, I hope, as I regain my strength … for the moment I myself am not yet mad.’33
This last comment is very revealing. Although aware that he suffered from fragile mental health, Vincent didn’t feel mad. He had also made clear, in his remarks concerning other painters such as Mourier-Petersen and even Gauguin, that he couldn’t conceive of creative expression without being close to mania. So intense was painting for him that he pushed himself to his physical and mental limits.
The end of January brought bad tidings for Van Gogh. His great friend Joseph Roulin left Arles on Sunday 20 January to take up a new post in Marseille. This was a promotion for Roulin, but left Vincent with no close friend in Arles. Augustine and the children would remain for a short time until Joseph could sort out accommodation for his family, and in her husband’s stead she kept an eye on Van Gogh. ‘His transfer necessitates his separation from his family,’ he wrote to Gauguin, ‘and you won’t be surprised that as a result the man you and I simultaneously nicknamed “the passer-by” one evening had a very heavy heart. Now so did I, witnessing that and other heartbreaking things. His voice as he sang for his child took on a strange timbre in which there was a hint of a woman rocking a cradle or a distressed wet nurse.’34
Vincent was always a caring man, but this hypersensitivity, especially to others, was similar to what he had experienced before his first breakdown. As long as they remained in Arles, he continued to see Augustine and the children regularly. At the end of the month he went to the local music hall to see a traditional Provençal pastorale, an allegorical retelling of the Christmas tale.35 As it was a family event, it is most likely he went with the Roulins. His painting The Dance Hall in Arles of December 1888 depicts a music hall with bright-yellow gas lights, hordes of spectators and cramped conditions, with Augustine placed clearly in the foreground. This music hall, Les Folies Arlésiennes, was the subject of a health report by Dr Rey some years later, in which he complained about the lack of privacy in the public facilities – anyone standing on the gallery could see directly into the toilets – and the plethora of signs asking clients to refrain from using corners of the music hall as urinals.36 I doubt that in Vincent’s time it was much different. Vincent described the pastorale to Theo:
Naturally it depicted the birth of Christ, intermingled with the burlesque story of a family of astounded Provençal peasants. Good – what was amazing, like a Rembrandt etching – was the old peasant woman … with a head of flint or gun flint, false, treacherous, mad, all that could be seen previously in the play. Now that woman, in the play, brought before the mystic crib – in her quavering voice began to sing and then her voice changed, changed from witch to angel and from the voice of an angel into the voice of a child and then the answer by another voice, this one firm and warmly vibrant, a woman’s voice, behind the scenes.
He finished his letter on a note of awe: ‘That was amazing, amazing. I tell you.’37 Vincent was showing some of the same symptoms that Gauguin had recorded a month earlier: a heightened sensitivity to sound, an obsession with the image of a mother rocking a child’s cradle and all forms of religious symbolism. Much as he tried to persuade others that he was back to normal, Vincent knew that his mental state was still poor. As January drew to a close, his letters to Theo were thick with remarks about madness. To Vincent, though, madness was always linked to creativity and, as such, explicable:
Just a few words to tell you that I’m getting along so-so as regards my health and work. Which I already find astonishing when I compare my state today with that of a month ago.
He continued, ‘And once again, either lock me up in a madhouse straight away, I won’t resist if I’m wrong, or let me work with all my strength,’ though more worryingly:
As it’s still winter, listen. Let me quietly continue my work, if it’s that of a madman, well, too bad. Then I can’t do anything about it … If I’m not mad the time will come when I’ll send you what I’ve promised you from the beginning … From what people tell me I’m very obviously looking better; on the inside my heart is a little too full of so many diverse emotions and hopes.38
Clearly conscious that he wasn’t yet quite right, Van Gogh suddenly remarked to Theo on 22 January that ‘everyone is afraid of me’.39 Five days later, Vincent received a most unexpected visitor: ‘The chief inspector of police came yesterday to see me, in a very friendly way. He told me as he shook my hand that if ever I had need of him I could consult him as a friend.’ Vincent still had concerns about losing his house; a policeman friend could be an enormous help. ‘I’m waiting for the moment to come to pay my month’s rent to interrogate the manager or the owner face to face.’40
Despite the station being across the road from the Yellow House, the chief of police was a busy man, and so popping in to see someone who had recently been hospitalised was highly unusual; it’s unlikely his visit was a simple courtesy, and implied that he had heard that the inhabitants of place Lamartine were corralling into action. Even the terminology Vincent employed, that the police official – a busy man – came ‘as a friend’, should have set alarm bells ringing, but Van Gogh seemed unaware of any secondary purpose to Inspector d’Ornano’s visit: ‘everyone here is good towards me, the neighbours &c., good and attentive as in one’s native country’.41 How strongly the sense of being a stranger in Provence still resonated. As did his fears that he wasn’t entirely well: ‘there are indeed still signs of the previous over-excitement in my words, but there’s nothing surprising about that, since in this good Tarascon country everyone is a touch cracked’.42
After paying his rent at the beginning of the month, he wrote to Theo, ‘I’m keeping the house for the time being, since I need to feel at home here for the sake of my mental recovery.’43 By early February, Vincent was once again in turmoil: his neighbours were both ‘afraid of him’ and yet also ‘kind’. His emotions were extreme and jumbled and he constantly projected his own feelings onto others.
In this utterly confused state of mind, Vincent decided it was time to pay someone a visit. ‘Yesterday I went back to see the girl I went to when I went out of my mind. I was told there that things like that aren’t at all surprising around here.’ Was he really told this? Or is he rationalising a moment of extreme intensity into an everyday event, for his own peace of mind? He goes on, ‘She had suffered from it and had fainted but had regained her composure.’ Yet again he links his own troubled mind with local custom, as if to alleviate the agony of thinking he alone is unwell: ‘But as to considering myself completely healthy, we shouldn’t do it … The local people who are ill like me indeed tell me the truth. You can live to be old or young, but you’ll always have moments when you lose your head.’44
Desperately trying to get back to work and lead a normal life, Vincent focused entirely on his painting. Little did he know that there was a slow-building storm heading his way. Perceived as a madman by the people around place Lamartine, he was the subject of unfriendly gossip. By early February 1889, Joseph Roulin, the only person in Arles who would have been able to defend him against his critics, had left for Marseille. Salles, living across town, was unlikely even to have been aware of the talk around place Lamartine and wouldn’t have had much sway over public opinion. Vincent was about to face a witch-hunt that would force him out of the city he loved so much. Vincent felt his solitude keenly, telling Theo that it seemed as if he were ‘alone on the sad sea’.45