Only painter in Europe who ever got in the ring with Tyson.
Posted on 06/19/2019 10:21:49 AM PDT by BenLurkin
The gun will be auctioned in France on Wednesday (June 19), where it's expected to sell for more than $50,000.
For years, most Van Gogh experts have accepted the explanation that he shot himself in the chest with a pistol in a suicide in July 1890
Van Gogh lived on for 30 hours before dying from the wound. His last words, according to his brother Theo, were "the sadness will last forever."
But in 2011, biographers Gregory White Smith and Steven Naifeh argued that Van Gogh didn't shoot himself, but was shot accidentally by 16-year-old René Secrétan, who was spending the summer in the village.
According to their biography "Van Gogh: The Life" (Random House, 2011), Secrétan and his brother both befriended and bullied Van Gogh when he stayed at Auvers — and that Secrétan possessed the gun involved.
The gun being auctioned in Paris next week is a Belgian-made 7mm Lefaucheux revolver — a popular small caliber handgun at that time.
The gun matches the description of the 7mm bullet taken from Van Gogh's body by his doctor, and it is theorized that its low power may be why Van Gogh didn't die immediately, but staggered back to his hotel with the bullet still lodged in his chest.
The pistol was found by a farmer in 1965 — 75 years after Van Gogh's death — in a field at Auvers, badly corroded and beyond use. It was then given to the family who owned the hotel where Van Gogh died.
Grégoire Veyrès, the auctioneer for Auction Art who is conducting the sale, told Live Science that an investigation by the writer Alain Rohan determined that the corroded weapon had been buried in the ground for at least 50 years.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
Another sad victim of the metric system. Or so I ear.
It’s not a pistol.
Okay, I’ll bite.
What is it?
You’re painting a grim picture.
I think I know what happened: The Russians colluded with him to shoot himself because everything is like totally Trump Hitler, racist, concentration camp type stuff.
That is an awkward phrase.
A revolver.
New to this stuff, are you Spruce?
If they didn’t find the pistol until 1965, how do they know that is the gun that killed Van Gogh?
Lefaucheux revolver
Pinfire. A popular system for metallic cartridge revolvers for a long stretch in the 19th century.
Only painter in Europe who ever got in the ring with Tyson.
It’s not a pistol.
Modern folks are the ones that get picky about a supposed pistol/revolver distinction. Folks back then, not so much. At the time this shooting happened, there were no magazine feed, automatically loading pistols.
I had the same question.
Apparently the question of murder vs suicide has been kicking around for a while.
The suicide theory is that Van Gogh wandered out into the fields alone, shot himself and passed out. As night came on and it got cold, he woke up. He searched for the gun to finish the job but could not find it. He eventually wandered back home and took to his bed. He died 30 hours later, having received some medical care, but being beyond help.
The gun in question seems to have been found years later in a field. Might be the same gun. Might not.
The rusty gun which Van Gogh probably used to shoot himself sold for €162,000 at a Drouot auction in Paris this afternoon. ArtAuction Rémy le Fur, which estimated the revolver at €40,000-€60,000, describes it as “the most famous weapon in art history”. The private buyer has not been named.
A morbid object to display. Maybe purchased as an investment?
Tell that to the state of Michigan.
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