Van Gogh’s ear: Gauguin ‘sliced it off with epee’

Art historians have always agreed until now that, only four months after painting the still life Sunflowers, Vincent Van Gogh cut off his own ear with a razor as he struggled with madness following a falling out with his fellow artist Paul Gauguin on Christmas Eve 1888.

Bleeding profusely, Van Gogh then staggered from his home in Arles in southern France to a brothel where he presented the ear, wrapped in newspaper, to a prostitute called Rachel. The incident did little to reduce the local gossip that Van Gogh was a troubled man.

Now two German academics have come up with a new theory: that during a furious row the Frenchman Gauguin, a top class fencer, sliced off the Dutchman's ear with his epee, and that the two artists - who would be called 'frenemies' if they were alive today - concocted the razor story to protect Gauguin from prosecution.

In Van Gogh's Ear: Paul Gauguin and the Pact of Silence, the Hamburg-based art historians Hans Kaufmann and Rita Wildegans claim that both men left hints to support the epee theory. In his final recorded words to Gauguin, for instance, Van Gogh wrote: "You are quiet, I will be, too".

They also cite correspondence between Vincent and his brother Theo, in which Van Gogh mentions a "pact of silence" made with Gauguin.

The authors also point to a Van Gogh sketch of an ear with the word "ictus" ­ the Latin term used in fencing to mean a hit - written next to it. They believe that zigzags drawn above the ear represent Gauguin's sword-play.

Finally, they claim that though Van Gogh clearly suffered from seizures, he had not gone mad at this stage. On this point, many will disagree: within six months Van Gogh had moved out of his "yellow house" on the Place Lamartine in Arles and committed himself to a mental institution down the road at St Remy de Provence.