Photo: Francois Guillot Agence France-Presse
Wouter van der Veen, of the Institut Van Gogh museum, poses next to the place alleged, where the Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh painted his last canvas before his mysterious death as a result of a gunshot wound.
Roots, the ultimate painting by Vincent Van Gogh, on the day that he is given death, has delivered its secret, thanks to an old postcard found by chance, revealing the last moments of the painter’s tragic destiny.
The discovery was made as he landed quietly at home of the documents for the containment in April, explained to the AFP Wouter van der Veen, Tuesday, at the inauguration of the site of the painting Auvers-sur-Oise, north of Paris.
“My eye was snagged by a detail on a postcard, a detail that was on the last Van Gogh painting “. “The configuration of the roots and trunks on the postcard corresponded to the one on the table “.
On the postcard dating from 1900 to 1910, there is a hill covered with a thicket with tree trunks and roots. This expert of Van Gogh was then documented his findings in a book, Attacked at the root. It took a few weeks at the Van Gogh Museum of Amsterdam to the experts conclude that it is “very likely” in the right place.
Tuesday, in the presence of Emilie Gordenker, the Museum’s executive director Van Gogh and Willem van Gogh, the great-grandson of Theo, brother of Vincent, was held the inauguration of the site, protected by a wooden structure temporarily, and that can become a place of pilgrimage.
It is located only 150 metres from the auberge Ravoux where the painter’s genius was for 70 days, suffering from a crisis of madness.
“A farewell letter “
This painting “had given over to all sorts of theories, on the fact for example that he would have signed a table, marking the beginning of abstract art, art nouveau,” noted the researcher.
“This painting, painted shortly before he shoots himself in the stomach on July 27, 1890, was unreadable, because the place of the realization remained impossible to locate “, he said.
Van Gogh, badly wounded, had to return in the night in the inn and died two days later after a long agony.
Some “had wanted that Van Gogh is a victim of society rather than the author of his life and of his death,” observed the researcher, referring to theses challenging this assumption.
In 2011, american researchers have defended the hypothesis according to which Vincent van Gogh would have been wounded by a shot accidentally that young people who were playing with a weapon.
However, this table is ” a testament, a farewell letter. The woods symbolizes for him the struggle of life. We harvest the trunks and the stump, new shoots appear… “.
“In this table, there is a consistency,” says Wouter van der Veen : this is the theme of life and death dear to Van Gogh. Last year, suicide was an option for him. This eliminates all of these theories are lame, who have not done well in his memory, like the one claiming that he would have been killed by accident by the kids, ” said the Dutch expert.
“The light of the sun painted by Van Gogh shows that he has applied the last brush strokes to the end of the afternoon, which tells us about his time during the day in dramatic,” stressed the specialist of Van Gogh.
For Teio Meedendorp, researcher at the Van Gogh Museum, this last work has been ” carried out in an environment that it had already been documented before with other paintings.” Van Gogh ” had to often move to the side of the location by going into the fields that stretched behind the castle of Auvers, where he painted during his last week “.
“What is extraordinary is that the principal strain is on the table is today still visible in the woods “, 130 years after, was struck by Wouter van der Veen.
As Rimbaud or Baudelaire, Van Gogh is one of those artists of the Nineteenth century whose talent and destiny the particular fascinate the world. And a revolver rusty, found in 1960 in a pre and which would have served Van Gogh’s suicide, had been sold at auction to a private individual in June 2019 for 162 500 € in Paris at the Hotel Drouot.
