page_title: Death of Vincent van Gogh
section_title: The shooting
hierarchical_section_title: Death of Vincent van Gogh / The shooting
caption_attribution_description: English: Notice of Vincent van Gogh's suicide and funeral appearing in Le Régional 7 August 1890
context_page_description: The death of Vincent van Gogh, the Dutch post-Impressionist painter, occurred in the early morning of 29 July 1890, in his room at the Auberge Ravoux in the village of Auvers-sur-Oise in northern France. Van Gogh was shot in the stomach, either by himself or by others, and died two days later.
context_section_description: Adeline Ravoux, the innkeeper's daughter who was only 13 at the time, clearly recalled the incidents of July 1890. In an account written when she was 76, reinforced by her father's repeated reminders, she explains how on 27 July, van Gogh left the inn after breakfast. When he had not returned by dusk, given the artist's regular habits, the family became worried. He finally arrived after nightfall, probably around 9 pm, holding his stomach. Adeline's mother asked whether there was a problem. Van Gogh started to answer with difficulty, "No, but I have..." as he climbed the stairs up to his room. Her father thought he could hear groans and found van Gogh curled up in bed. When he asked whether he was ill, van Gogh showed him a wound near his heart, explaining "I tried to kill myself." During the night, van Gogh admitted he had set out for the wheat field where he had recently been painting. During the afternoon he had shot himself with a revolver and passed out. Revived by the coolness of the evening, he had tried in vain to find the revolver to complete the act. Unsuccessful, he returned to the inn.
  Adeline goes on to explain how her father sent Anton Hirschig, also a Dutch artist staying in the inn, to alert the local physician, who proved to be absent. He then called on van Gogh's friend and physician, Dr Gachet, who dressed the wound but left immediately, considering it a hopeless case. Her father and Hirsching spent the night at van Gogh's bedside. The artist sometimes smoked, sometimes groaned but remained silent almost all night long, dozing off from time to time. The following morning, two gendarmes visited the inn, questioning van Gogh about his attempted suicide. In response, he simply replied: "My body is mine and I am free to do what I want with it. Do not accuse anybody, it is I that wished to commit suicide."
  As soon as the post office opened on Monday morning, Adeline's father sent a telegram to van Gogh's brother, Theo, who arrived by train during the afternoon. Adeline Ravoux explains how the two of them watched over van Gogh who fell into a coma and died at about one o'clock in the morning. (The death certificate records the time of death as 1.30 am.) In a letter to his sister Lies, Theo told of his brother's feelings just before his death: "He himself wanted to die. When I sat at his bedside and said that we would try to get him better and that we hoped that he would then be spared this kind of despair, he said, "La tristesse durera toujours" (The sadness will last forever). I understood what he wanted to say with those words."
  In her memoir of December 1913, Theo's wife Johanna refers first to a letter from her husband after his arrival at Vincent's bedside: "He was glad that I came and we are together all the time... Poor fellow, very little happiness fell to his share, and no illusions are left him. The burden grows too heavy at times, he feels so alone..." And after his death, he wrote: "One of his last words was, 'I wish I could pass away like this,' and his wish was fulfilled. A few moments and all was over. He had found the rest he could not find on earth..."
  Émile Bernard, an artist and friend of van Gogh, who arrived in Auvers on 30 July for the funeral, tells a slightly different story, explaining that van Gogh went out into the countryside on the Sunday evening, "left his easel against a haystack and went behind the château and fired a revolver shot at himself." He tells us how van Gogh had said that "his suicide had been absolutely deliberate and that he had done it in complete lucidity... When Dr Gachet told him that he still hoped to save his life, van Gogh replied, 'Then I'll have to do it over again.'"
caption: Le Régional report of Van Gogh's suicide and funeral 7 August 1890
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