The strange death of Vincent van Gogh

Suicide or murder?

Read time 3 minutes

The question was simple enough: if I could travel through time and witness any historical moment for a single day, where would I go, and what would I hope to learn? Most people answer with the obvious milestones of civilization—the construction of the pyramids, the signing of historic treaties, the fall of empires, or the moon landing. But as a visual artist, my answer is far more intimate and unsettling. I would travel to July of 1890 to witness the death of Vincent van Gogh.

Not to watch a genius die, but to discover whether he was actually murdered.

The official story

A black-and-white photograph of a wooded roadside in Auvers-sur-Oise showing exposed tree roots and slender trunks along a raised embankment. A man sits among the trees near the center of the image, partially surrounded by tangled roots and deep shadows. The location is believed to match the scene depicted in Tree Roots, one of Vincent van Gogh’s final works. — The historical photo that confirms the exact location of Vincent van Gogh’s painting “Tree Roots.” The photo was discovered at the Pontoise Museum blog.

History has accepted the conclusion that van Gogh committed suicide by shooting himself in the chest in a wheat field near Auvers-sur-Oise. According to the official story, he then somehow walked back to the Auberge Ravoux with a bullet lodged inside him, survived for nearly two days in agony, and eventually died in bed while his brother Theo sat beside him. The story has become inseparable from the mythology surrounding van Gogh: the tortured artist who could not survive the weight of his own mind.

But the more closely one examines the details, the less convincing the narrative becomes.

The questions that don’t add up

If van Gogh truly intended to end his life, why shoot himself in the chest rather than the head? Suicide by firearm is usually direct and decisive. A shot to the torso is uncertain, painful, and unreliable, especially in the late nineteenth century when medical intervention was primitive. More puzzling still is the fact that the wound itself was strangely angled, leading some researchers to question whether it could have been self-inflicted at all.

Then there is the issue of the missing revolver.

The gun used in the shooting was never conclusively identified at the time of his death. That absence alone leaves an uncomfortable gap in the official explanation. A man supposedly determined to take his own life vanishes into a field, fires a poorly aimed shot into his chest, leaves no weapon behind, and then walks a considerable distance back to town before collapsing. Rather than dying immediately, he lingered for days in pain. Nothing about the sequence feels logical or deliberate.

The possibility of jealousy

Self-Portrait shows Vincent van Gogh gazing intensely toward the viewer with piercing green-blue eyes, a red beard, and slicked-back hair. He wears a pale blue-green jacket against a swirling turquoise background filled with rhythmic brushstrokes, creating a sense of movement and emotional tension characteristic of van Gogh’s expressive style. — “Self-portrait,” 1889, Vincent van Gogh, oil on canvas, 65 cm × 54 cm. Credit: Musée d’Orsay, Paris

As an artist, I find this contradiction impossible to ignore because artists understand obsession, envy, rivalry, and emotional intensity in ways history often sanitizes. Van Gogh was not merely another painter wandering the French countryside. Even in relative obscurity, his talent must have been visible to those around him. Genius has a way of provoking admiration and resentment simultaneously. One cannot help but wonder whether jealousy played a role in his death.

Perhaps another artist envied his raw originality. Perhaps a personal conflict escalated into violence. Perhaps a relationship—romantic or otherwise—became combustible. Human history is full of murders disguised as accidents and accidents disguised as suicides. The further back in time one goes, the easier it becomes for uncertainty to harden into accepted truth.

Alternative theories

Modern biographers have even proposed alternative theories suggesting that van Gogh may have been accidentally shot by local youths and chose to protect them by claiming responsibility. That possibility alone reveals how fragile the official story really is. If historians can seriously debate whether the most famous suicide in art history was actually an accident, then the case is far from closed.

What fascinates me most is not simply the mystery itself, but the way society romanticizes artistic suffering. Van Gogh’s suicide has become central to his legend. The narrative is dramatically convenient: the misunderstood genius, rejected in life, destroyed by despair, only to become immortal after death. It is a story the world wants to believe because it transforms tragedy into mythology.

The myth of the doomed artist

But mythology often oversimplifies reality.

If I could stand invisibly in that field in July 1890, I would want to see the truth stripped of interpretation. I would want to know whether van Gogh truly chose death, or whether history quietly accepted a lie because it fit the image of the doomed artist too perfectly. Perhaps the greatest revelation would not concern van Gogh himself, but our own need to explain genius through suffering.