The revolver rusty, with whom Van Gogh would have committed suicide, has been acquired by a private individual for of 162,500 euros including fees. This weapon was discovered in 1960, attracted a crowd of collectors and admirers of the Dutch painter, Wednesday, at the Hotel Drouot in Paris.
The revolver of the type Lefaucheux, who would be mortally wounded in 1890 in a field in Auvers-sur-Oise was sold to the hammer by mr. Rémy Le Fur at the price of 130.000 euros (expenses not included) to an individual who enchérissait on the phone and which one is unaware (yet) of the identity. The fatal weapon has reached more than double the top of its estimated range (between 40,000 and 60,000 euros).
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however, This is not the revolver the most expensive in the history of the auction. In 2016, another revolver, also Lefaucheux, an estimated 50,000 to 60,000 euros, with which Verlaine had tried to kill Rimbaud in 1873, had been awarded 435.000 euros at Christie s.
Nicknamed «the weapon the more famous of the history of art», the revolver attributed to Van Gogh, caliber 7 mm, has been put under the hammer by the house AuctionArt – Rémy Le Fur. Of the auction that smelled of powder for many amateurs, european, american or asian, many of which are still standing in the cramped room where the object of the offense was put on sale.
Me Gregory Veyrès, auctioneer assistant, gave a brief presentation on «the revolver with which Van Gogh would have gone to the death». And to quote a phrase from a letter of the painter to his brother Theo: «My work to me, I risk my life.» Martin, 38 years old, came from the netherlands, had been aware of not having the means to bid. «Beautiful flowers and the madness in the head, life and death, for me, it’s Van Gogh», he says.
Van Gogh was prone to violent emotional outbursts
Very quickly, the price spike was made more by telephone and via the internet in the same room. The weapon had been found in the 1960s by the farmer of the field where the painter was mortally wounded at Auvers-Sur-Oise, and was exposed by the Van Gogh Museum of Amsterdam in 2016.
It had been delivered to the owners of the hotel Ravoux where Van Gogh stayed in 1890, a time when the artist, subject to frequent emotional outbursts, was at the summit of his art by painting over a canvas per day. She is the daughter of those owners who sold to the auction.
On Sunday, July 27, 1890, according to the thesis generally accepted by the specialists, the «cursed artist» would have been in a field, would have raised his shirt and shot himself in the chest with this weapon borrowed from his host, the innkeeper Arthur Ravoux,. .
The revolver, it would have escaped out of the hands and he would have fainted. He would have woken up in the dark of the night, wounded, and would have taken the path from the hostel. Despite the care of doctor Paul Gachet, Van Gogh dies after two days of agony in a modest bedroom. «It was a late heroic and brutal, the culmination of the fatal of an existence without end, turbulent, dominated by the disease that was not enough total to destroy the heart and to exclude completely the reason,» wrote Paul Gachet in 1956, the son of dr. Gachet, a physician designated by the painter, in the Work of the national museums.
The thesis of a shooting accidental
According to AuctionArt, the analysis of the weapon, certifies that it remained buried in the soil during a period of time up to 1890. In 2011, researchers in the us have defended a different view, asserting that Vincent van Gogh would have been wounded by a shot accidentally that young people who were playing with a weapon. «We believe this weapon is that of Van Gogh, the expertise will in the sense of this attribution. It is a strong presumption, but it can never be proven 100%», said ms. Gregory Veyrès.
The revolver is already the subject of an application for a loan to the Museum Städel Frankfurt for an exhibition next October to February 2020, according to the auction house. The fate of Van Gogh still nourished today of many fantasies. His attacks of madness, its originality crossed the borders of his country, and have inspired films, and biographical works.
The auction comes at a time when immersive exhibition, organized by the Workshop lights up in December in Paris, allows visitors to immerse themselves in the landscapes he has painted through projections on the walls, the ceiling and the floor.
