Description

One hundred and thirty years ago, on July 27, 1890, Vincent Van Gogh suffered a gunshot wound to the abdomen. He died in his bed two days later, in the small French town of Auvers-Sur-Oise. To this day, the artist's death has been labeled a suicide.

Why would someone who wrote so many letters - 830 that we know of, at a rate of almost a letter a day - fail to write a suicide note on the day of his death? Why would anyone who wanted to escape his painful existence, shoot himself in the stomach, only to endure an agonizing 30-hour exit? Why did Vincent cut off his ear, and how many ears did he cut off? Does the calculus hold, that the bigger the piece of a severed ear, the more tortured, the madder, the artist must be in the eyes of the world?