On the night of December 23, 1888, in the Yellow House in Arles, Vincent van Gogh cut off his left ear with a razor, wrapped it in paper and handed it to a young woman at one of the town’s brothels. It is the most famous episode of his life and the origin of the myth of the “mad painter”. What is known for certain is less than what is usually told: there were no witnesses to what happened in the house, Van Gogh remembered nothing, and the most widespread version, that he chased Gauguin with the razor, was given by Gauguin himself much later and has never been confirmed. This page sums up what the sources say: the standard biography and Van Gogh’s own letters.
What happened: the known facts
In the fall of 1888 Van Gogh had persuaded Paul Gauguin to move in with him in Arles and found a “studio of the south” there. Gauguin arrived on October 23. They painted together, traveled to Montpellier in December to see the Musée Fabre, and quarreled more and more: Van Gogh admired Gauguin and wanted to be treated as an equal; Gauguin was arrogant and domineering. Van Gogh feared Gauguin would abandon him, and he told Theo that when they talked about Delacroix and Rembrandt, “The discussion is excessively electric”. In the days before the crisis it rained heavily and the two were shut up in the house.
The exact sequence of that night is not known. After an argument on the evening of December 23, Van Gogh went back to his room, where he apparently heard voices, and cut off his left ear with a razor, wholly or in part. The bleeding was severe. He bandaged the wound, wrapped the ear in paper and took the package to a woman at a brothel that he and Gauguin frequented. The next morning a policeman found him unconscious at home and took him to the hospital in Arles, where he was treated by Félix Rey, a young doctor who was still in training. The ear reached the hospital, but Rey did not try to reattach it because too much time had passed. Van Gogh remembered nothing of what had happened, which suggests an acute mental crisis; the hospital’s diagnosis was “acute mania with generalized delirium”, and within a few days the local police ordered that he remain hospitalized.
Did he cut off the whole ear or just the lobe?
For decades it was repeated that he had cut off only the lobe. There is, however, a note written by Dr. Rey for the novelist Irving Stone with drawings of the wound: according to Rey, and also to the policeman who found him, Van Gogh cut off the entire outer ear. Theo, Signac and Gachet, on the other hand, who saw him without bandages, maintained that only the lobe was missing. Wikipedia stays cautious (“wholly or in part”), but the testimony of the doctor who treated him is the most direct there is.
Who did he give the ear to?
Tradition spoke of a prostitute named Rachel. The researcher Bernadette Murphy uncovered her real identity: Gabrielle Berlatier, known in her youth as “Gaby”, who in December 1888 was 17 years old and worked as a cleaning girl at the brothel and at other establishments in Arles. Gabrielle died in Arles in 1952, at 80, and her descendants were still living near the town in 2020. According to Murphy’s research, she was not a prostitute but a cleaning girl at the establishment.
Gauguin’s version and its problems
Fifteen years later, Gauguin said that the night of December 23 followed several episodes of physically threatening behavior, and that when he went out for a walk Van Gogh followed him and “rushed towards me, an open razor in his hand”. This account is not corroborated by anyone, and Gauguin almost certainly did not sleep in the Yellow House that night but in a hotel. There is also money in the background: Theo may have owed Gauguin money, and Gauguin suspected that the brothers were exploiting him financially. Most likely Vincent had realized that Gauguin was planning to leave, and that fear of abandonment triggered the crisis.
Gauguin alerted Theo immediately. Theo, who had just proposed to Jo Bonger on December 24, took the train to Arles that same night, arrived on Christmas Day, found his brother half-lucid and started back to Paris that night. In the first days of treatment Vincent repeatedly asked for Gauguin, who asked a policeman to tell the patient, if he asked for him, that he had gone to Paris, because “the sight of me might prove fatal for him”. Gauguin left Arles and they never saw each other again, although they kept writing to each other.
What Van Gogh’s letters say
The first letter after the crisis is dated January 2, 1889, written from Dr. Rey’s office at the hospital (letter 728): “In order to reassure you completely on my account I’m writing you these few words […]. I’ll stay here at the hospital for another few days — then I dare plan to return home very calmly. Now I ask just one thing of you, not to worry, for that would cause me one worry too many”. And about Gauguin: “did I terrify him? In short, why doesn’t he give me a sign of life?”. Rey himself added a few lines to Theo: “this over-excitement was only fleeting. I strongly believe that he will have recovered in a few days’ time”.
On January 4, on his first outing from the hospital, he wrote to Gauguin (letter 730) “a few most sincere and profound words of friendship”, and he thanked the postman Joseph Roulin for having had “the presence of mind to get me out of there before the others were convinced” (a short outing, not his discharge). On January 7 he returned to the Yellow House (letter 732): “a line to let you know that I returned home today. How I regret that you were troubled for such a little thing”. And he announced that he would go back to work the next day, starting with one or two still lifes and the portrait of Dr. Rey; that same month he also painted the two self-portraits with a bandaged ear.
The self-portraits with a bandaged ear
In January 1889 Van Gogh painted two self-portraits with his head bandaged: the Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear at the Courtauld in London, with a fur cap, a green coat, an easel and a Japanese print in the background, and the Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe, in a private collection. In both the bandage appears on the right side, because he painted himself in a mirror: the wound was on the left. He also painted Dr. Rey (now in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow); the doctor did not like the painting and used it to patch a hole in his chicken coop before giving it away.
What happened next
He spent the following month between the hospital and the house, with hallucinations and delusions of being poisoned. In March 1889, thirty neighbors, among them the Ginoux family, signed a petition describing him as le fou roux, “the redheaded madman”, and the police closed up his house; Van Gogh went back to the hospital, where Paul Signac visited him. In April he moved into rooms belonging to Dr. Rey, after a flood damaged paintings in the Yellow House, and on May 8, 1889 he voluntarily entered the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum in Saint-Rémy, where he would paint The Starry Night. There is no agreement on the illness behind all this, whether epilepsy, bipolar disorder or something else; you will find more in the Van Gogh biography.
Frequently asked questions
Which ear did Van Gogh cut off?
The left one. In the self-portraits it looks like the right one because he painted himself looking in a mirror.
Did he cut off the whole ear?
According to Dr. Rey, who treated him, the entire outer ear; other witnesses spoke only of the lobe. Wikipedia leaves it at “wholly or in part”.
Did Gauguin cut off Van Gogh’s ear?
The standard sources, the biography and the letters themselves, describe self-mutilation during a crisis that Van Gogh had no memory of; Gauguin’s story about the razor is not corroborated.
Where is the ear now?
It was not preserved. It reached the hospital but could not be reattached.
Sources: Wikipedia, “Vincent van Gogh” (section on the hospital in Arles); letters 728, 730 and 732 (vangoghletters.org).