135 Years On: Revisiting Van Gogh's Death and His Enduring Legacy

R.I.P. Vincent

Today’s post is a favorite (edited) essay originally published a year ago to commemorate the anniversary of Vincent’s death. Feels like yesterday.

Did Vincent van Gogh die from a broken heart?

And how did he die? Was he alone?

Today, July 29, is the anniversary of Vincent’s death in 1890. One hundred thirty-five years ago.

It’s brought back the memory when I visited the small room in which he died.

How he might have felt in those last moments.

And why it could matter to you.

Visit to Vincent’s Room in Auvers

A few years ago, my husband and I took a Sunday train out from the Gare du Nord train station to Auvers-sur-Oise, a metro community outside Paris.

We were on a little trek for me to do research for my book but also just to enjoy travel to European cities. We’d both retired so for the first time neither of us had professional accountability to jerk us stateside and back into a 9-to-5 routine.

Nevertheless, I am still motoring on squeezing productivity out of every minute. So, even though trains run less frequently on Sundays, one weekend I suggest we go to Auvers to visit the cemetery where Vincent and Theo (his brother) are buried. Planning our time to fit neatly into catching infrequent trains— “Easy peasy,” I assure my husband.

“Besides I took French in high school,” I add, putting to rest any possible doubts of my scrupulous travel planning.

After a little garbled French-English wrangling to get train tickets from an annoyed ticket agent (couldn’t blame him), we’re on our way. Yes, we smoothly switch trains to make a tight connection (See? No big deal.) and when we step out onto a pretty street where a nearby bakery’s fragrant breads and pastry tantalize the air, and cheerful red and pink flowers border the two-lane road, I’m happy.

A perfect Sunday expedition.

Map-less, we wander a little, eventually coming across the actual church Vincent painted (The Church at Auvers) when he lived here, and then follow the DIY-Vincent-trail signs up a dirt road alongside a wheatfield to the cemetery where Vincent and Theo’s graves lie side by side under a bed of ivy. (Later in my book’s research I would learn that Jo —Theo’s wife and the person who ultimately enabled Vincent’s art to become broadly known — would move her husband’s remains to lie here next to Vincent’s in 1914). I stand at the foot of the graves staring at the tombstones.

I imagine that Jo stood here too.

How her thoughts must have tumbled. A combination of gratitude and heartache, for her life had changed and taken on new meaning because of these deaths.

My husband clears his throat. I check my watch. Ninety minutes before the train returning to Paris makes its stop. Plenty of time to explore more, right?

So, we find the small house where Vincent rented a room. Pay a few euros for the next tour. Spend time waiting by reading all the info plaques scattered around the courtyard. I snap iPhone photos for future reference. My stomach rumbles and I make a mental note to stop at the bakery. Then once the tour group finally amasses—about 8-10 people—my Cuban husband chats with a couple from Spain, but I’m only half trying to translate for the group is moving forward and I squeeze myself closer to hear the tour guide.

We mount narrow stairs, bunching a little at the turns. The tour guide continues to talk, but now I don’t differentiate what she said from what I would later research. I do remember how reproductions of Vincent’s paintings are leaning along walls leading to his room, and also inside his room once we’re there.

We crowd in.

You know what? It’s really small. Non-descript, even with those colorful posters. Enough room for a twin bed against one wall, a little window, but not much more. Here at his stay in Auvers Vincent would demonstrate a burst of creativity and vitality with his explosion of 80 paintings and drawings in just two months. It’s a crescendo of color. A boundless unique expression.

And so sad that he died thinking that few people had noticed.

The tour guide is talking, but I am lost in the image of Theo sitting at Vincent’s bedside on July 29th. Clasping his hand. Two days earlier in a field a mile away, Vincent had shot himself in the stomach, then managed to walk back to this house, climb those stairs and collapse onto his bed. An urgent telegram to Paris would bring Theo and a few close friends racing.

Vincent would die as an ordinary laborer. His talent only recognized by a few. Theo, heartsick and overcome with grief for his older brother, must have felt enormous remorse that he hadn’t been able to sell more than one of Vincent’s paintings, The Red Vineyard.

For his annoying, exasperating, talented big brother had tried with every ounce of his being to surmount mental illness and still paint when he could. Studying, experimenting, following an uncharted way toward expressing a wordless urgent passion to portray transcendence..

Theo would have grieved. Could have, should have.

Vincent too. For in these final moments he believed his life and talent had been for nothing. With Theo by his bedside, his last words were "La tristesse durera toujours."

The sadness will last forever.

I have tears in my eyes.

He died, never knowing that his life had not been in vain. That—unbelievable— his works would be rediscovered and revered, turning him into the most popular, beloved artists of all time.

My husband nudges me, pointing to his watch. I snap to! We have ten minutes to get to the train! We elbow through the tour group — me “excusez-moi-ing” —, hurriedly scoot down the stairs, and dart onto the street in a jog toward the train. Pass the bakery—still emitting such fragrance, oh! Dodge tourists on the now-crowded sidewalks. Glance back for traffic so we can run on the street. Sweaty, puffing, no time for the women’s room, charge up the steps and onto the train.

Listen to Your Inner Voice

That trip took place in 2019. This last spring in April I published the book I was researching then: Saving Vincent, A Novel of Jo van Gogh*. It chronicles the true story of how Vincent did become known after all through the tireless, lifelong efforts of a person he barely knew: his sister-in-law, Theo’s wife, Jo.

Vincent was 37 years old when he died. He would never know that someday his works would inspire others. That his decision to follow his own intuition and inspiration would not only be remembered, but celebrated worldwide.

It would have been unfathomable to him that Orchard with Cypresses painted two years earlier in Arles would one day sell for $117.2 million (at Christie’s New York in 2022).

And that millions would flock to his exhibitions.

Yet, like the long flaming tail of a comet, he persisted for ten years—producing 900 paintings and 1,100 drawings—before succumbing to despair.

It takes courage to stand for your own creative vision and voice. I’m grateful Vincent did—and the woman who finally saved him—Jo van Gogh, too. They both are role models to me of following one’s inner unique voice.

We all have it.

You, too.

What’s one step you can take today to honor it?

Here’s to you! And Vincent,