The Mystery Of Van Gogh’s Ear

Jeremy Paxman joins dedicated art lover and author of Van Gogh's Ear: The True Story, Bernadette Murphy, at the climax of her seven-year mission to solve one of the most perplexing art mysteries of our time: did van Gogh really cut off his own ear, and what led him to commit such an act?

Having followed an intricate trail through the evidence, Bernadette’s search finally comes to an end in Berkeley, California, where a tiny document drawn by Dr Felix Rey, who had treated Van Gogh following the incident, had been hiding for years in the Irving Stone archives.

Rey had drawn a before-and-after diagram of the ear for Stone, who was researching for his famous book Lust For Life. The diagram confirms what had always been dismissed as Hollywood exaggeration, the brutal severance of the entire ear. Bernadette takes the evidence to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the world’s foremost centre for the study of his life and work.

Vincent van Gogh, an unknown and unsuccessful painter during his lifetime, is today among the most celebrated artists of all time. In 1888, the artist spent a year of his life in the city of Arles in Provence, where he created some of his most treasured masterpieces.

But it was also the year that he took a blade to his own ear, before giving it to a young girl outside a nearby brothel. He was found the following morning - on Christmas Day - his head in blood-soaked rags.

This event has become one of the most famous legends in the history of art, but nobody has been able to agree what actually happened - even whether he cut off his ear or just a tiny part of it - until now.

Before the final piece of the puzzle is uncovered, the documentary follows Bernadette as she identifies for the first time the girl called ‘Rachel’, the girl van Gogh gave his ear to that evening, and tracks down her descendants.

Bernadette deduces that Rachel was in fact, not a prostitute, but a young cleaner named Gabrielle, who worked brothels and other regular haunts of van Gogh's near where he lived in Arles in 1888, and sheds light on the true nature of their relationship.

The programme also offers analysis of Van Gogh’s work, created directly after the incident: clues within offer insight into his genius and mental state at the time; his feelings of abandonment by his brother Theo, on whom he relied financially and emotionally, and friend and fellow artist Paul Gaugin.

Publicity contact: SH8