Mysterious Van Gogh - Alternative View

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Mysterious Van Gogh - Alternative View
Mysterious Van Gogh - Alternative View

Video: Mysterious Van Gogh - Alternative View

Video: Mysterious Van Gogh - Alternative View
Video: The Mystery Of The Fake Van Goghs (Full Documentary) | Perspective 2024, March
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Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) is one of the most famous painters in the world. Alas, he lived a short and not very happy life. Despite the fact that more than 2000 paintings came out from under the painter's brush, his work received recognition only after his death.

Sad fate

Having started his career as an art dealer, Vincent left her to pursue his own painting. This occupation became the main one in his life, although he tried himself in a variety of professions, even tried to become a priest.

Although Van Gogh worked very fruitfully and was appreciated in the artistic environment, during his lifetime his paintings were almost never sold. If not for the support of his younger brother Theodore, he would have died of hunger.

The artist was also unlucky in his personal life: for some reason, women of his circle did not like him and he had to be content with relationships with ladies of easy virtue.

Illness and suicide

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Numerous deprivations and abuse of absinthe led to mental breakdown. The official diagnosis given to the artist was “temporal lobe epilepsy”. He often painted pictures in a deranged state, suffering from terrible seizures, when his mind was clouded, and it seemed that clouds of black birds were falling on him. During one of these seizures, Van Gogh cut off his ear - a notorious episode from his biography …

In the end, he was admitted to the Saint-Paul psychiatric hospital in Saint-Remy-de-Provence (at that time the painter was in France). There he spent a year, creating over one hundred and fifty paintings and about a hundred drawings and watercolors.

In the spring of 1890, Van Gogh left the hospital and moved to Auvers-sur-Oise near Paris. In July, the artist painted his famous painting "Wheat Field with Crows", and a few days later while walking he shot himself in the heart. The bullet did not kill him immediately, 29 hours later he died of blood loss. Only after the suicide of the painter did the public become interested in his canvases and they began to sell them for a high price.

Mysterious self-portrait

One of the most enigmatic works of Van Gogh is Self-Portrait in a Straw Hat (1887), which some called a "painting-traveler", and others - a "painting-killer."

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Legend has it that one Christmas day, a tramp brought a canvas to the shop of the famous French collector and art dealer Ambroise Vollard, which he announced as a famous self-portrait of the famous Van Gogh. But Vollard himself conducted an examination of the original for Baron Rothschild, so he was sure that in front of him was a fake. He drove the clochard away, and he, leaving the painting in Vollard's house, drowned in the Seine in grief.

Later, Vollard recalled that the drowned man told: allegedly he received a picture from his friend, and he, in turn, exchanged it for a bottle of juniper vodka from a guy who served as a waiter in a bar, whose regular was Van Gogh. Once a young man shared his dream with an artist - to become a steward on a ship and go sailing, to see distant countries … Then Van Gogh presented him with his new work, saying that he would like the painting to travel the world. He himself was already seriously ill and could not travel.

Vollard, just in case, cleared the canvas of dirt and dust, and the colors of a familiar palette shone in front of him: it was undoubtedly Van Gogh! So, he wrote two such self-portraits! In general, the artist often made "doubles" of his canvases.

Vollard sold the painting for a good price to an Argentine landowner, a certain Senor Lopez. She liked his young daughter, who wanted to hang a portrait in her bedroom at a mansion in Buenos Aires. But the girl was not destined to return to Buenos Aires. When she was returning with a newly purchased portrait to an apartment that her father rented in Paris on Boulevard Raspail, she was ambushed in an elevator by two admirers who were jealous of the beauty either to each other, or to someone else, and … stabbed her to death!

The inconsolable father returned the canvas to Vollard again. He remembered that Van Gogh seemed to want the picture to travel the world. On reflection, he offered to purchase the portrait of the famous politician Georges Clemenceau, who, as he knew, was constantly on the move. But he immediately hung the canvas over the bed. And on the same evening an attempt was made on his life …

Strange disappearance

Then the painting came to the steelmaker Henry Frick, whose heirs sold it to a young Spanish collector in October 1973. But the new owner did not want to pay the customs duty, and he decided to take out the canvas illegally, wrapping it in a Persian carpet, which was declared as a gift to the secretary, who is also the mistress of his boss.

The carpet was brought to the collector's office. After amorous pleasures, the boss asked his beloved where the picture was. It turned out that the girl took it for wrapping paper and threw it out the door. However, the canvas was nowhere to be found.

Later it turned out that the "cardboard wrapper" caught the eye of the cleaning lady and she threw it into the garbage chute. Probably, the priceless canvas was simply ground up along with the debris. Or maybe someone was aware of the "operation" and made every effort to take possession of the masterpiece?

The story made it into the newspapers. The collector couldn't believe that the object of his lust no longer existed. He undertook an active search and one day he nevertheless saw a "fatal" portrait in the hall of the Detroit Institute of Arts. It is still there, but which of the two - from the Rothschild collection or the same mysterious "portrait-traveler"? It remains a mystery covered in darkness …

Author: Irina Shlionskaya