The Tragic Life and Brilliant Art of Vincent van Gogh | Full Documentary

Vincent van Gogh, a painter who breaks the boundaries of art. Today his paintings are among the most famous and most expensive in the world. This image of the tragic genius between genius and madness. A painter who lives with prostitutes, who is considered a troublemaker by his colleagues, who mutilates himself out of despair. A very difficult person to place. Vincent van Gogh dies poor and misunderstood. Who was he really? A madman or a genius with a very vulnerable soul? Researchers are using state-of-the-art methods to find the real Vincent van Gogh behind this mysterious figure. He has very high ambitions, very high hopes, big dreams. They want to unlock the secrets of his art and to shed new light on the low points of his life. It's phenomenal to think that he managed to accomplish this within a space of 10 years, to become a leading member of the avant-garde, starting from somebody that could hardly draw. The results of science paint a new, startlingly different picture of this giant of art. Here, in a mental asylum, Vincent van Gogh produces some of his greatest masterpieces. The former monastery of Saint Paul de Mausole, near Saint-Rémy in Provence. In May 1889, the Dutchman seeks refuge behind its thick walls from the life that overwhelms him. Refuge from the people who don't understand him. And he hopes for help in the face of the mysterious seizures that haunt him. What keeps van Gogh alive is his art. He wants to, he has to, keep painting. The starry night. No-one before him had ever painted a night sky in this way. Instead of depicting reality true to nature, van Gogh alienates and abstracts, thus anticipating modernist painting. In the mental asylum in Saint-Rémy, Vincent van Gogh struggles with the greatest crisis of his life. After a strange quarrel, he mutilates his left ear. Flurries of mental derangement keep him from painting again and again. He eats paint and drinks turpentine. Van Gogh says that he has hallucinations, that he hears things that he really didn't during those attacks, that he doesn't know what he's doing. Van Gogh suspects that his feverish creative work is partly to blame for the seizures. He accepts them as the price to pay for great art. He wrote to his brother Theo, my pictures cost me dearly, sometimes perhaps even in blood and brains. In fact, van Gogh wears himself out painting. 362 paintings in the last two years of his life alone. And he revolutionised art. You have to understand that what van Gogh was making at the time was quite out of line of everything. The thing that he added to art and art history is the fact that you can think of the world as something in lines, that you see movement in his pictures, and that's something totally new. But above all, van Gogh depicts the world in completely new luminous colours. He was constantly pushing the boundaries, so there's a kind of level of intensity to his colour in many of his paintings that was really novel in his time. Since then, we have Andy Warhol and Gerhard Richter and other colourists who, you know, played at the very edges of what colour can be, but we have to think back what this looked like in the 1880s. It was very shocking. In his day, the verdict was that such art cannot be the product of a healthy mind. But this assessment is overturned in the following decades. Somehow, he becomes Vincent van Gogh, the creator of this huge body of masterpieces that have won over the hearts and minds of the world. What was his driving force? Are his paintings the spontaneous result of his madness? Or the expression of a highly sensitive artist's soul? Anyone who wants to understand van Gogh and his gigantic oeuvre will probably come closest to him in Amsterdam. As the world's largest collection of the artist's work, the van Gogh Museum attracts millions of visitors year after year. But his works are also meticulously studied here. In order to preserve them for posterity in the best possible way, researchers want to understand exactly how van Gogh's masterpieces were created and how they were originally intended to appear. It really started when we started to examine each painting one by one, taking out of its frame. Often underneath the frames where the paint has been protected from light, there were remnants of much brighter colour around the edges. The intense colours make van Gogh's sunflowers the eye-catcher of every exhibition. What might the magically luminous still life have looked like fresh on the easel? That's what a unique experiment by the museum aims to show. The search for the secrets of van Gogh's colours begins in the laboratory of the Imperial Cultural Heritage Office of the Netherlands, with tiny samples of the painting. Under the microscope, the cross-sections make layers of colour that have already faded on the surface visible again. Van Gogh's very volatile red, for example. A mass spectrometer reveals the chemical elements contained in each sample. These, in turn, reveal the composition of the colours and reveal the extent of the discolouration. But the researchers do not leave it at that. They want to combine science and art. Their new knowledge makes it possible to reproduce van Gogh's original colours using old recipes from the archive. The aim of the project? To have the famous masterpiece copied as accurately as possible. The museum entrusts Charlotte Caspers, artist and restorer, with the task. So that's a really strange thing about the sunflowers, actually. Everybody in the world knows them, but the painting already has aged, so it's like an old person you get to know, whereas it has been just newly born when it came from van Gogh's easel and then it was really bright. It's famous, everybody knows it, but not in the way he made it. Charlotte Caspers has to understand the structure of the painting in detail before she can reconstruct it. To do this, she uses x-ray images, colour cross-sections, so-called XRF scans and transmitted light photos of the painting. So all these things combined give quite a good plan of how to start and what to use, how to work. I love doing this and I always do this with a lot of respect because it also feels very private. When you go so deep in somebody else's work, you see what he was looking for, searching for, why he made changes. Yes, it feels very intimate. For Charlotte Caspers, repainting the sunflowers means channelling van Gogh, feeling how he was, who he was. Vincent was born and raised in Grootsondert, a village in the south of Holland. His father, Theodorus, is a strict Protestant priest. Mother Anna, bourgeois and status-conscious, keeps her children away from the poor peasant children. But the siblings have each other. Vincent is especially close with his little brother Theo. He invents games for him and they explore nature together. Vincent, see here, I found an egg. Great, take it to Mama. Theo is Vincent's closest confidant throughout his life, perhaps the only person who ever really understood him. He seems to have been, to a certain extent, indeed a lonely boy too, I tend to think, an outsider. And an oddball. Tirelessly and meticulously, he collects, examines and catalogues beetles, plants and bird's nests. He lives in his own world. He devotes himself to things that excite him with an almost fanatical devotion and passion. Ready. Finish doing something. You must come down now at once. No. Little Vincent often argues with his parents and withdraws from them. His father and his mother believed that it was crucial for their children to temper their speech, to temper their emotions and to live life in an orderly way. And all of a sudden they have this child who, right from the beginning, didn't conform to anything. That the maids called him the strange boy. His whole life, Vincent's parents do not accept that he is different and deny him the recognition he so longs for. At a loss as to what to make of their strange boy, they arrange for him to train in his uncle's art printing empire. Vincent is 17 years old at the time. For the first time, he finds himself in the world of art, as a salesman. This only existing photo of him is taken two years later when Vincent is transferred because of his rude manner. And he was shipped off to be a shipping clerk at the enterprise in London. He was fired from that. He goes to Paris and he insulted the clients. If somebody was looking at a painting that he didn't like, he would go up to them and say, only somebody with terrible taste would be interested in that, in the enterprise he was working in. So they not only fired him, they banished him from ever stepping foot in the gallery again. He was a bookseller, he went back to London and to England again, and there he worked as a teacher in a school for a very poor salary. At that point, he basically tried to become a missionary. The Borénage Coalfield in Belgium. After his constant failure, Vincent finds work as a lay preacher here at the age of 25. Jesus Christ was the carpenter's son. He worked for 30 years in a humble workshop. He was a labourer with marks of weariness and of suffering on his face. Just like you, who, simple and proud and believing in God, enter the mind day after day. Talk of revolution, but God wants us to live humbly on this earth of his. Van Gogh wants his congregation to live as simply and piously as he does. His sermons are not only muddled, however, they also strike the wrong note. The downtrodden miners are not comforted by Van Gogh's words. They see the young man rather as a religious fanatic who overdoes it with his priestly existence. He lets himself go to such an extent that even the dusty coal miners consider him a filthy disgrace. Once again, Van Gogh fails here too, despite his deeply and sincerely felt religious vocation. It's here. It's really very easy. It's in here. It's all in here. His community turns away from him. They even ensure that he is recalled. For Vincent, it is the lowest point of his life so far. He is penniless, unemployed, aimless. His decline also disturbs his family. His own father wants to have him committed to a mental institution. It gives you a sense of what the family felt about him, that they thought he needed to be committed. I don't think it takes Sigmund Freud to understand that for many of us, trying to live up to our parents' expectations, especially when we haven't done that, is a very strong motive for us, and it certainly was for Vincent. He is extremely disappointed to have failed again. To be abandoned by everyone again. Deeply despondent, Vincent writes to his brother Theo. He was searching for a place in the world for himself. I think he was longing to console people, but also to be consoled. Together with other art historians, Nienke Bakker has analysed the extensive correspondence between Vincent and Theo. The letters provide a unique glimpse into Vincent's thoughts, plans and inspirations, and also his spiritual life. Thanks to the letters, we also learn of Theo's reaction to his brother's despair. He responds with a proposal that gives Vincent a new lease of life. Theo knows his older brother likes to draw. If Vincent would like to try his hand as an artist, he would support him financially. Still in Borinage, Vincent sets to work. At the age of 27, an age when other artists are creating masterpieces, Van Gogh is still painting rudimentary figures in pencil. Van Gogh is not gifted with natural talent. But, just as his tendency to excess was disastrous in bourgeois life, with art, his fanatical zeal will prove to be a stroke of luck. He works tirelessly. Can you move a little? Yes. In The Hague, he finds a deaf-mute pensioner who lets him dress him up for a pittance. At the time, Van Gogh struggled with dimensions and perspective. He therefore made use of a perspective frame as an aid. In his letters to Theo, he enthusiastically describes its construction and function. In fact, the self-taught artist will be dependent on this crutch for a long time. This is apparent in works created years later, like this one for Montmartre in Paris. The auxiliary lines are visible here, even to the naked eye. Van Gogh, who stubbornly refuses a classical artist's training, needs the aid to convey dimensions correctly on the canvas. At the time, Van Gogh was living with Zine Honnick, a prostitute with illegitimate children. Much to the displeasure of his family. Vincent knew that his parents and also Theo were against this relationship. But he also felt very attached to her and to her children. This is the only time that he actually had his own family. Vincent gives in to pressure from his family and ends his relationship with Zine. Despite his non-conformist nature, he longs for companionship. Yet once again, he is alone. Five years into his career as an artist, at the age of 32, Van Gogh believes he has finally created his first great masterpiece, The Potato Eaters. For months, he painted portraits and made individual studies for this picture. As an artist, he hopes for the recognition that has denied him as a human being. The reactions to the earth-coloured work, however, are painful. His brother Theo and fellow painters considered it old-fashioned and unsellable. He finally enrols at the Art Academy in Antwerp, that wants to put him in the beginner's course. Van Gogh is in danger of failing on this classic path of a painter, even at the basic skills that are required. So how does this amateur become one of the greatest artists in history? Christie's Auction House in New York in 1990. Seemingly out of nowhere, a painting appears on the auctioneer's stage that has not been seen in public for decades. The famous portrait of Dr Gachet. Painted in 1890, it is the last major portrait the Dutchman painted before his death. It shows Van Gogh's neurologist, Paul Ferdinand Gachet. When Van Gogh made it, he was so poor that he had to keep exchanging drawings and paintings for food and paint. Selling in the room now, all down then, against the telephone, not yours here, fair warning, at $75 million. For you, sir, $75 million. $75 million. This makes the painting the most expensive work of art of its time. The buyer, a Japanese businessman. The story of Dr Gachet, however, is not only one of top prices, but also an art thriller. The Städel Museum in Frankfurt is involved. In 2019, it celebrates Van Gogh as the inspiration for the German Expressionists with an exhibition and explains why Van Gogh became so popular in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. The fact that Dr Gachet, of all people, is missing from this exhibition is all the more regrettable for the museum as it had acquired the famous portrait in 1911. The only remnant of the famous portrait is stored in the museum's painting depot in the basement. It is the original frame for Dr Gachet, kept as a reminder of scandalous events. That was really one of the key works here in the collection. He was initially presented in his pioneering role, in his role as an inspirational figure of the German avant-garde. And I also think that was part of the downfall because, of course, these were the artworks that were taken down here in the museum in 1933. Provenance researcher Iris Schmeisser had delved deeply into the Dr Gachet case file for the Städel Museum. The National Socialists' justification for the confiscation? Problematic foreigner. And with regard to the so-called problematic foreigners, that's a quote, that's really the term that was used, which also included Van Gogh. There was talk of mental perversion, aberration, degeneration, being out of sorts. Dr Gachet ends up in Berlin, along with paintings by other denigrated artists. They were first stored there in a granary and then Hitler and Goebbels inspected these stocks. And in this context, we can assume that they plan to exploit these products of decaying art, in inverted commas, to make money. And Dr Gachet then became something like a pilot project to try this out. Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring sells the painting to a dealer in Amsterdam. Here, its trace is lost, until it reappears at the auction in New York 50 years later, only to disappear from the public eye once again. But how did the potato-eaters painter become the famous Dr Gachet painter? How did Van Gogh progress from the dusty earth colours to the garish contrasts? The transformation takes place in Paris in 1886, where Vincent Van Gogh finds the style that makes him immortal as an artist. Vincent soaks up everything Europe's art capital has to offer, like here in the Louvre. He had something like a photographic memory, so when he would sit and study a painting, which he could sometimes do for as long as a day, he would remember the passages of colour, brushwork, that created a kind of imaginary museum. This insatiable thirst for art is only one reason for his visit to Paris. Here, Vincent is also reunited with his brother Theo, who lives in Paris as a successful art dealer. You're always welcome in Paris. Come, let's go home. Theo's monthly cash injections are hardly enough for Vincent's artistic ambitions. He is simply looking for a cheap place to live, and therefore wants to move in with Theo. Construction of the Eiffel Tower is just beginning in Paris. Industrialisation changes the city, and science changes the way we look at the world. Photography makes it possible to capture their image. Classical painting faces serious competition. It is an overwrought, fatalistic time. L'envie de la boue, the desire for booze and excess, reigns in the city's cabarets and cafés. Poets drinking themselves to death, and painters losing their minds, exert great fascination at the end of the century. Vincent lives with his younger brother in Paris for two years. Theo, I'm back. The art dealer brings Vincent into contact with the Parisian avant-garde, painters whose works finally vanish the old-fashioned from Van Gogh's works. Vincent, can you come here, please? I was able to buy one of Toulouse-Lautrec's paintings. Poudre de riz is the name of the portrait of the young woman at the table. Vincent is thrilled, and at the same time inspired, to evolve the avant-garde style even further. See here how the colour draws the eye? Now, imagine the tablecloth, blue, and the tin, orange. How intensely that would shine. Toulouse-Lautrec, Georges Seurin, Louis Anquetin, or Émile Bernard. Vincent's new acquaintances have long been experimenting with shapes and colours, dots and surfaces. Van Gogh wants to be like them, but here, too, he remains an outsider. He goes to the soirees of Toulouse-Lautrec, and Sousa Valadon tells afterwards what this consisted of, simply a boy, a person who came in with a canvas underneath his arm, would sit in a corner, would say nothing, and at the end of the soiree, he left again. But Vincent also pushes ahead enthusiastically with his painting on his own. In no time at all, he masters the stylistic devices of the avant-garde. He feverishly experiments with the element that would retain the greatest significance for him until the end of his life, colour. With the help of woollen threads, he tests contrasts with which he wants to increase the intensity of his pictures. It is the awakening of an exceptional artist. It's not that he abandons what he's done in the Netherlands, he's transforming it, but he's keeping to the very pronounced brushstrokes and his very personal style. His artistic transformation is made clear by two self-portraits that Van Gogh painted in Paris. The first was painted shortly after his arrival and is still in the old earth colours. The second, he paints shortly before his departure, a self-confident artist in Van Gogh's famous cobalt blue. However, his face also shows signs of exhaustion. In Paris, he got lost. It has something to do with the stress, indeed, to be part of the avant-garde at the time, and for that reason, he went to the south of France and had a kind of idea that that was paradise, which, of course, it wasn't, but that's what he expected of it. Vincent Van Gogh arrives in Provence in the spring of 1888. It is the beginning of the two most important years of his creative life. In the meantime, he has thrown off the shackles of realistic portrayals. Here, he finally wants to paint things as he sees them and feels them. He wants to capture the truth, the essence of things, and in doing so, he breaks the boundaries of art at the time. Without regard for his health, he paints everything he sees in front of his canvas on a piecework basis. 180 paintings in just over a year, an enormous legacy and a captivating style. The sheer physicality of these paintings and the very bright, vivid colour schemes and, most of all, the emotions that this conveys, you really sense the feeling that he wanted to convey. The city of Arles and its surroundings are now both the setting and the motif for his work. This is where he takes up residence. Are his aspirations now fulfilled in Arles? I think he remained the outsider. He was not part of the community in that sense. I mean, he was looked upon by the people in the town as this strange artist wandering around. Van Gogh's Café Terrasse in the evening is one of the paintings created in Arles, so famous today that the café is one of the main attractions for tourists visiting Provence. Just a few hundred metres further on, on Place Lamartine, is the no less famous Yellow House. Van Gogh rented it in the late summer of 1888 and captured his new home on canvas in glaring contrast. On the first floor, he furnishes his bedroom. He paints it in colours that are meant to convey peace and security to the viewer. Not in the picture, 12 chairs that he buys as soon as he moves in, for all the artist colleagues who are to work and live with him in Arles. His bedroom is the one on the left, and the one on the right is going to be Gauguin's bedroom when he comes to stay, because Vincent had a plan. Wouldn't it be great? I'm living in this house. I love this little town. You can get around. There's a million subjects that we can paint. Why don't I create a studio of the south? An artist commune. Van Gogh paints sunflowers in all variations to express his joy at the guests he hopes will soon arrive. He finds it easier to communicate his feelings with colour than with words. Probably the most famous of the sunflower paintings can be admired today in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. But what did Vincent's welcome picture look like when he painted it and the colours had not yet faded? After Charlotte Caspers has completed her analyses, she can finally begin to repaint the masterpiece with the scientifically reproduced original colours. She knows from the artist's correspondence that he planned his paintings meticulously. Contrary to the myth of the impulsive, mad genius, his works were well thought out in the best sense. But he was incapable of painting slowly. With Van Gogh in general, he works often spontaneous, but you can compare it with sporting. When you run every day, you're very, very good in it. And it's also with the rhythm of his brushstrokes and the thickness of his paint. And that's because he's doing it every day. There's this spontaneity, but also this organisation in it. It's really difficult to mimic. And it's very unnatural to copy very secure with all this research data, a painting that was painted really quickly. So that's always the tension. I should paint it quick as well, but then it would not be a reconstruction of his painting, then it would be my painting. When somebody stands behind me and looks at the painting, I feel very vulnerable. I feel like they think that I'm exaggerating, whereas I'm using the same pigments. To see the world through Van Gogh's eyes, thanks to Charlotte Casper's reconstruction, we can experience this impression 130 years later. This is what the sunflowers look like today. And this is how they might have looked when the painting was still wet on Van Gogh's easel, before the red faded and the yellow discoloured. For me, it was an important moment. I suddenly thought, OK, this is Van Gogh's religion. Because the colour that you see there is indeed so fresh, so colourful, that you indeed get... You're glad. I feel what I paint. I paint what I feel, Van Gogh once wrote. When he painted the sunflowers in Arles, he must have been very happy and full of anticipation. The painter Paul Gauguin confirms his arrival, finally a brother in spirit with whom he hopes to share life and art. But in expectation of his guest, Vincent works even harder and faster. In anticipation, he tires and burns himself out, recklessly. When you look at how he worked, how immensely productive he was, he was almost working day and night on paintings. He was not eating well, he was drinking too much. I mean, he did do a lot of harm to his health. Before Gauguin came, he actually wrote that he was so tired that he had to sleep for two days and take some rest, which he didn't want to because he wanted to do all his paintings. For the eagerly awaited guest, the famous sunflowers, they were actually created as wall decoration for Paul Gauguin's room. What happens next is still the subject of much speculation today. The author, Bernadette Murphy, has painstakingly reconstructed what exactly happened in the Yellow House in the autumn of 1888 on the basis of countless documents in the Arles town archives. Vincent's idea of an artist's commune was to come to a dramatic end shortly after Gauguin's arrival in Arles. An undernourished and overexcited yet highly ambitious Van Gogh and the self-confident Gauguin. Two exceptional artists, but also two excessive characters in a confined space that could not go well for long. Finally, things start to go a little bit strange towards the end of the month, November. The weather is changing. They can't go out and paint quite so much. They just, they start arguing about pretty much everything. Do I really seem like that to you? Like a monkey with a paintbrush? At the beginning, when Gauguin came, he was, I tend to think, a little bit more friendly to Gauguin in the terms of, well, eager to learn something from Gauguin. But at the end of the day of Gauguin, he certainly tried to do and to show Gauguin what he was capable of doing. The true artist creates paintings from his imagination, from his memory. Have you still not understood it? I want to see the truth of things and then I want to capture it on canvas. The quarrels continue to escalate until the day before Christmas Eve. Just because you campaign for memory doesn't mean all the other artists in the world have to do without. I can only recognise what is true when I see it in front of me. I can't just make it up and then... That is a lie. You're lying to the viewer, man. And the reality of your sunflowers is a colour that makes you go blind. After this dispute, Gauguin probably wanted to turn his back on Van Gogh for good. Van Gogh was just ruined by this because he had worked so hard to create a little community of artists. He'd finally gotten Gauguin to come down and live with him and deep down, I think he understood that he would never be able to live with anybody. Vincent's really showing more and more signs of disturbance. I'm going to tell you what I've concluded to try and understand what happened. Sometime after dinner, Gauguin goes into the park. In his memoirs written many years later, Gauguin claims that Van Gogh threatened him with a gun in a hut. I cut the throat razor and he was sufficiently scared and Vincent returns to the yellow house. Gauguin does not follow him. Instead, he spends the night in a hotel. Meanwhile, the drama unfolds in the yellow house. That night, with the very razor he had previously wielded to threaten Gauguin, Van Gogh inflicts a serious injury to his own ear. He made a summery bandage out of rags and then walks the five minutes to the house of tolerance number one. The street where the brothel was located still looks the same today. So here we are now in Rue du Bouledal. Unfortunately, the house of tolerance number one no longer exists. It was on the corner here, just behind my back. You can see that there's cars parked here now but the walls are still there. Vincent Van Gogh came here, walked up the street. He must have seen a light on the corner. It was the most prominent of all the brothels. What happens next was reported to a gendarme shortly afterwards by eyewitnesses at the brothel. Later, the mysterious events even end up in the local newspaper. Can you fetch Rachel, please? Rachel! Take good care of it, please. Give it to me. Until his death, Van Gogh remained silent about what moved him to harm himself so severely. But he did process this event in his paintings. In the dormitory of the asylum in Arles, for example. The asylum where Vincent was taken the next day after a policeman found him unconscious at home. And in self-portrait with a bandage. But what actually happened? What exactly did Van Gogh do to himself that night? In the course of her research, Bernadette Murphy also comes across a document in the archives of the University of Berkeley that could solve this more than 130-year-old mystery. It was made by one of the few people who saw Van Gogh's injury, his doctor in Arles. It was a dream document to find. It's just a ripped off piece of paper from a doctor's prescription form. And it's dated 1930, 18th of August, 1930. It says, the ear was cut with a razor. And the doctor even describes how Van Gogh must have proceeded. Vincent pulled up his ear, took a razor and sliced through his ear. And then it says what the ear looked like afterwards. And then he gives a little thing. He says, I'm very happy to give you this testimony about my unhappy friend. And he signs a doctorate. A few months after this fit, Vincent moves at his own request from Arles to the mental asylum in Saint-Rémy, 30 kilometres away. His mental and spiritual state unsettles him. Taking care of himself costs him too much energy. Above all, Vincent wants to justify Théo's trust and finally find success. And to do that, he has to keep painting against all odds. He is now 36 years old. In his nine years as an artist, he has not managed to stand on his own two feet financially. Yeah? Your brother has sent a parcel. I sent him a list three weeks ago with all the colours that I urgently need. My brushes have all lost their hair. Thank you. Théo, now married, still sends him paints, brushes and canvases regularly. These utensils are more important than medicine for the restless artist. Art is his lifeline during this agonising period. When he is afflicted by fits, he is unable to paint. But in the phases in between, Van Gogh continues to create masterpieces such as the famous Starry Night. In this fantasy landscape, he mixes the world outside his window with memories and feelings in a grandiose pictorial symbiosis. The swirls of clouds and stars in particular stand out with their undulating lines. Some art historians see in them the expression of inner ecstatic states, which, according to Van Gogh in his letters, the sight of nature always triggered in him. At the same time, however, the stars also seem to have been a source of comfort and hope for him. At one point, he actually says in his letters, when I have a feel for something, for religion, I go out and paint the stars. In the centre of the picture, Van Gogh has even hidden a wistful memory of his childhood. Church steeples like this are not to be found in Provence, but they are in his Dutch homeland. Today, it is difficult to know for sure what demons tormented the patient Vincent Van Gogh. At the time, the director of the institution in Saint-Rémy believed it to be epilepsy with delusional ideas. It was to remain unchallenged as the sole diagnosis. Knowledge about mental illness was limited at the time, and the only therapy, regular baths, does not help Vincent either. After a year, he finally gives up his confinement experiment and turns his back on the South of France. He realised, of course, that he has to coach society to become better. He needs people around him. I mean, he's living amidst patients. Come on, that doesn't help you. In the summer resort town of Auvers-sur-Roise, north of Paris, Vincent Van Gogh tries one last time to stand on his own two feet. Here, in the auberge Ravoux, he lives cheaply and all alone. Several times he tries to lure Theo and his wife Johanna to visit, but this last attempt to find a family also fails. Instead, a terrible quarrel breaks out in Paris between the brothers, who are always very close. During this time, Vincent is under the medical care of Dr Gachet, the man whose portrait will later fetch a record price. But Dr Gachet will no longer be able to help Vincent. A few days after the confrontation with Theo, on the 27th of July 1890, Vincent Van Gogh goes to the fields behind the church of Auvers. There, he tries to take his own life with a revolver. Badly injured, the painter drags himself back to the auberge. The doctor who is summoned cannot save Vincent Van Gogh. Theo has rushed from Paris and sits in the chair next to him. Vincent dies two days later, aged only 37. It's clear that he was not hopeful for the future, that he had a lot of worries, that he was depressed. The fact that he didn't want to be a burden for Theo anymore was probably part of it, but there's not one reason, I think, why he decided to end his life. The painter is buried in the Auvers cemetery. His brother Theo only lives half a year longer. He dies of syphilis. The artist and his brother, Petra, rest side by side to this day. Vincent Van Gogh painted 90 paintings in the 70 days he spent in Auvers. One of the last, a kind of legacy, wheat-filled with crows. Vincent wrote to his brother that he wanted to express sadness and extreme loneliness with this painting, but also the vitality, the force of nature, which fascinated him throughout his life. The myth of the mad painter claims Van Gogh painted like this because he was crazy. His letters and his art paint a different picture. Van Gogh painted in this way because his soul was so fragile, his sensibility so vulnerable, and his art was perhaps his only gateway to life. Even painting could not save Vincent Van Gogh in the end, but it made him immortal. His life has moved and influenced millions of people. His example has freed artists all over the world from the constraints of realism and encouraged them to experiment freely with colours and form. He became an example for every artist. If you want to achieve something and you have a goal, please try it, do it. And knowing that certain risks were involved, because you could fail, because you could not sell, because you could be poor, but if you believe in it, hey, try it. There's a sentence in his many letters in which he says, nothing could make me happier than that the average person would hang my paintings on their walls. His wish actually came true. With his paintings, he succeeded in connecting with the souls of people all over the world. This gave Vincent Van Gogh the companionship that was denied him throughout his life.