Did Van Gogh cut off his ear, and how much of it?

The claim, and the verdict

This topic involves self-harm and mental illness. It is described here factually, without detail of the injury. If you are struggling yourself, please talk to someone you trust or contact a local crisis line.

The claim comes in two forms. The common one: Van Gogh, the troubled genius, cut off his ear. The corrective one, repeated in many books for most of the twentieth century: he only cut off a bit of the lobe. A third version, popular online since 2009: Gauguin did it with a sword and they covered it up.

The verdict: Van Gogh injured himself, on 23 December 1888. The evidence points to most or all of the outer left ear, not just the lobe, though how much exactly is still argued. The theory that Gauguin did it has little support among historians. Why he did it is not known for certain; he himself said afterwards that he could not remember much of the night.

What happened in Arles in December 1888

Van Gogh moved to Arles in February 1888 and rented the Yellow House, hoping to start an artists' colony. Paul Gauguin joined him on 23 October 1888, his costs paid by Vincent's brother Theo, an art dealer. The two painted side by side for nine weeks, but argued about art and money, and the strain grew.

On the evening of 23 December, after a confrontation, Gauguin left the house and spent the night in a hotel. Van Gogh, alone, injured his left ear, wrapped the severed part in paper and took it to a brothel nearby, where he handed it to a young woman. He then went home. The next morning the police found him in bed, badly weakened by blood loss, and he was taken to the Hôtel-Dieu hospital in Arles. There he was treated by a young doctor, Félix Rey.

Theo travelled down from Paris and arrived on 25 December. Gauguin left for Paris and the two painters never met again, though they wrote to each other. Van Gogh was discharged on 7 January 1889. In January he painted two self-portraits with a bandaged ear; the better known one is in the Courtauld Gallery in London. He painted from a mirror, so the bandage appears on the right side of his face, but it was the left ear.

What the evidence shows: whole ear or lobe

The witnesses disagreed, and none of them wrote at the time with the precision we would like. Here is what each said, and when.

Murphy, a British researcher living in Provence, spent years on the case. Her key find was the 1930 note from Rey, who treated the wound, made for Irving Stone while he researched his novel Lust for Life (1934). It was shown at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam in July 2016, in the exhibition On the Verge of Insanity: Van Gogh and His Illness. Murphy also searched Arles records and identified the young woman as Gabrielle Berlatier, who worked at the brothel as a maid and was not, as legend said, a prostitute called Rachel.

Sceptics point out that Rey drew his sketch more than forty years later, from memory, and that people who met Van Gogh in 1889 and 1890 seem to describe part of the ear remaining. A fair summary: more than the lobe, probably most of the ear, with a small part possibly left.

Did someone else do it? How the other stories spread

In 2009 two German art historians, Hans Kaufmann and Rita Wildegans, argued that Gauguin, a keen fencer, injured Van Gogh with his sword during the quarrel, and that both men kept quiet. Their case rests on hints in the two painters' later letters. Most specialists, including the Van Gogh Museum, are not persuaded: Van Gogh never accused Gauguin, and the hospital, police and Theo all treated the wound as self-inflicted.

The “just the lobe” story spread in the twentieth century partly through Signac's account and partly because it was easier to accept. The “mad genius” story spread through Irving Stone's novel, its 1956 film starring Kirk Douglas, and countless posters. It is unfair in a specific way: Van Gogh's crises were episodes, and between them he worked with great control. The cause of his illness is still debated, with epilepsy, bipolar disorder, the effects of alcohol and other conditions all proposed. No single diagnosis is agreed.

What Van Gogh himself said and did afterwards

Van Gogh wrote to Theo within days of leaving hospital, playing down the episode and asking him not to worry. In letters over the following months he described what had happened as an illness, and wrote that work was the best way he had of holding himself together. On 8 May 1889 he chose to enter the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole at Saint-Rémy, where in the following year he painted about 150 pictures, among them The Starry Night (June 1889).

His letters show a man reasoning carefully about his art even in hard times. From Arles in August 1888, months before the crisis, he told Theo he wanted to use colour arbitrarily, to express himself more forcefully, rather than to copy exactly what he saw. He died at Auvers-sur-Oise on 29 July 1890, aged 37.

His letters, more than 800 of them, are published free online by the Van Gogh Museum and they are the best source for him. You can also put questions to an AI recreation of him built from those letters by talking with Vincent van Gogh in Yuga. It is not the real painter and it can make mistakes, so cite the letters in schoolwork.

How to weigh witnesses who disagree

1. Ask how close each witness was. Rey treated the wound; Signac saw it healed months later; Bernard was not there.
2. Ask when they wrote. A memory written down forty years later is weaker than a note made that week, even from the best placed witness.
3. Ask what each wanted. Family members may have softened the story; Gauguin may have wished to clear himself.
4. Look for documents nobody wrote for the public: hospital and police records, a doctor's private sketch.

The general method is in how to check if a quote is real and primary and secondary sources. For interview ideas, see questions to ask Vincent van Gogh.