On 27 July 1890, a few days after
completing his Crows in the Wheatfields, he borrowed a revolver on the pretext that he
wanted to shoot crows, went into the fields, and shot himself in the stomach. ‘Misery
will never end’, was one of the last things said to his brother.
The news of Vincent’s
death was announced in the local newspaper. Barely a year later, Theo, the brother
he had loved so much, died too. In 1914 Theo’s ashes were transferred to
Auvers, where the two brothers’ graves lie side by side.
The more than 700 letters that
van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo constitute a remarkably illuminating record of the life
of an artist and a thorough documentation of his unusually fertile output—about 750
paintings and 1600 drawings.
He wrote to his brother, Theo, before
a few days he went to suicide, ‘I still felt very sad and continued feel the storm
which threatens you weighing on me too. What was to be done - you see, I generally try to
be fairly cheerful, but my life is also threatened at the very root, and my steps are also
wavering. I feared - not altogether but yet a little - that being a burden to you,
you felt me to be rather a thing to be dreaded, I set to work again - though the brush
almost slipped from my fingers, but knowing exactly what I wanted’
Van Gogh sold only one painting
during his lifetime (Red Vineyard at Arles; Pushkin Museum, Moscow), and was little known
to the art world at the time of his death, but his fame grew rapidly thereafter. His
influence on Expressionism, Fauvism and early abstraction was enormous, and it can be seen
in many other aspects of 20th-century art. He with Cézanne and Gauguin, are said to
be the greatest of Post-Impressionist artists.
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