Van Gogh's Ear: The True Story

377 Pages·2016·6.672 MB·English

by  Bernadette Murphy

PUBLISHED BY RANDOM HOUSE CANADA
Copyright © 2016 Bernadette Murphy
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this
book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including
information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except
by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published in 2016 by Random House
Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, and simultaneously in the United
Kingdom by Chatto & Windus, an imprint of Vintage, a division of Penguin Random House UK,
London, and in the United States by Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York. Distributed in Canada by
Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.
www.penguinrandomhouse.ca
Random House Canada and colophon are registered trademarks.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication data is available upon request.
Murphy, Bernadette, author
Van Gogh’s Ear: The True Story / Bernadette Murphy
ISBN 9780345816054
Ebook ISBN 9780345816078
Cover painting: Self Portrait, 1887 by Vincent van Gogh, courtesy of the Van Gogh Museum,
Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)
v4.1
a
In honour of my parents, who, despite having eight children, gave me the
precious gift of their time – my mother by teaching me to read before I
started school and my father by taking me to a public library and, more
importantly, showing me how to use it.
As, painfully to pore upon a book To seek the light of truth, while truth
the while Doth falsely blind the eyesight of his look.
William Shakespeare, Act 1, scene i, Love’s Labours Lost
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
List of Illustrations
Prologue
1 Reopening the Cold Case
2 Distressing Darkness
3 Disappointment and Discovery
4 Almighty Beautiful
5 Living in Vincent’s World
6 Night Owls
7 Monsieur Vincent
8 A Friend in Need
9 A Home at Last
10 The Artists’ House
11 Prelude to the Storm
12 A Very Dark Day
13 The Murky Myth
14 Unlocking the Events
15 Aftermath
16 ‘Come Quickly’
17 ‘Alone on the Sad Sea’
18 Betrayal
19 Sanctuary
20 Wounded Angel
21 Troubled Genes
22 ‘The Certainty of Unhappiness’
Epilogue
Photo Insert
Acknowledgements
Notes
Bibliography
Illustrations
All drawings and paintings are by Vincent van Gogh unless otherwise
stated.
Cover and Endpapers
Cover
Detail from Self-Portrait, Paris, March to June 1887 (© Van Gogh Museum,
Amsterdam, Vincent van Gogh Foundation)
Endpapers
Photograph of place Lamartine, Arles (© Private Collection); detail from
The Yellow House (The Street), Arles, September 1888 (© Van Gogh
Museum, Amsterdam, Vincent van Gogh Foundation); detail from Café
Terrace at Night (place du Forum), Arles, September 1888 (©
Rijksmuseum Kroller-Müller, October)
Black and white illustrations
fm1.1 Arles seen from the Wheatfields, late July 1888 (© akg-
images/CDA/Guillemot)
1.1 Cutting from Le Forum Républicain newspaper, 30 December 1888 (©
Médiathèque Municipale de la ville d’Arles)
1.2 Arles from the air, photo taken at 9.55 a.m. on 25 June 1944 by 455th
Bomb Group, US Air Force (© Air Force Historical Research
Agency, AFB, Maxwell Alabama)