aixcentric

Yesterday I met up with local author Bernadette Murphy whose book ‘Van Gogh’s Ear – The True Story’ has been such a success.  It was chosen by BBC Radio 4 as their book of the week and was also the subject of a BBC2 TV documentary.

It’s a fascinating and gripping story of detective work as Bernadette travelled extensively and exhumed endless archive material to find out exactly what happened that night in December 1888.

When I visit, it always strikes me how little must have changed in Arles.  The back streets are still as quiet and dusty as they must have been in Vincent’s time, although his Yellow House was destroyed in 1944.  The tourist offices in both Arles and Saint-Remy have done a good job of placing boards with his paintings in key places – now is a good time

The old hospital in Arles is now a mediatheque – but the garden is as he painted it, and described in a letter. A lovely space.

to visit before these places get too crowded.  Plus the Fondation Van Gogh is showing ‘Calm and Exaltation. Van Gogh in the Buhrle Collection’ with 8 of his paintings, until 17th September.

Bernadette’s book is on sale in Aix’s Book In Bar, and from this week is available in paperback.

More details of the book below:

On a dark night in Provence in December 1888 Vincent van Gogh cut off his ear. It is an act that has come to define him. Yet for more than a century biographers and historians seeking definitive facts about what happened that night have been left with more questions than answers.

In Van Gogh’s Ear Bernadette Murphy sets out to discover exactly what happened that night in Arles. Why would an artist at the height of his powers commit such a brutal act? Who was the mysterious ‘Rachel’ to whom he presented his macabre gift? Was it just his lobe, or did Van Gogh really cut off his entire ear? Her investigation takes us from major museums to the dusty contents of forgotten archives, vividly reconstructing the world in which Van Gogh moved – the madams and prostitutes, café patrons and police inspectors, his beloved brother Theo and his fellow artist and house-guest Paul Gauguin. With exclusive revelations and new research about the ear and about ‘Rachel’, Bernadette Murphy proposes a bold new hypothesis about what was occurring in Van Gogh’s heart and mind as he made a mysterious delivery to her doorstep that fateful night.

Van Gogh’s Ear is a compelling detective story and a journey of discovery. It is also a portrait of a painter creating his most iconic and revolutionary work, pushing himself ever closer to greatness even as he edged towards madness – and one fateful sweep of the blade that would resonate through the ages.