Smith and Naifeh spent more than ten years researching and writing Van Gogh: The Life, which they intended to become the definitive biography of Vincent Van Gogh. During their research period, they were given rare access to the archival vaults of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which held everything from the artist’s preparatory sketches to hundreds of his handwritten letters.

While sorting methodically through this treasure trove of information, the authors noticed strange or conflicting information in the various reports of the artist’s suicide, which caused them to pause: the artist’s supposed last letter to his brother, posted the day of his death, told of his hopeful future (and of a large purchase of paints just ordered at his Parisian art supplier); all early firsthand accounts of Vincent’s death referred to the event as Vincent having “wounded himself” or as an “accident” – with no one ever discussing or considering suicide as a potential outcome; and that all of Van Gogh’s painting supplies – left in the field in which he had supposedly been painting the afternoon he shot himself – had mysteriously disappeared, as did the gun that Van Gogh was said to have used. All of this doesn’t seem too suspicious to me upon the first read, but it planted in Smith and Naifeh a seed of conspiratorial doubt.

It seemed, they reckoned, that perhaps Van Gogh didn’t intend to kill himself at all and that a tall tale about suicide became the accepted narrative. To Smith and Naifeh, there was little in the way of hard evidence to support the long-assumed tale of Van Gogh’s suicide: no eyewitnesses to the actual shooting, no literal smoking gun, no firmly identified location of the terrible occurrence. It occurred to the authors that the story bordered more on legend than truth. Could it all be a falsehood, a tall tale? Smith and Naifeh wondered, though they kept their hypothesis to themselves.

And then the most bizarre thing happened. Their hypothesis gained credence with the discovery of another supposed firsthand account of Vincent Van Gogh’s death that had mysteriously been overlooked or forgotten for many years. In 1956, a frail man in his eighties named René Secrétan stepped forward to give a series of interviews to a French journalist, claiming to have a firsthand recollection of the famous Vincent van Gogh. René Secrétan grew up in a prosperous Parisian family, and every summer the whole Secrétan crew would decamp to Auvers-Sur-Oise to enjoy their vacation villa.

Nearly everything in history is bullchit anyway. That's why it's called His-Story.

In 1890, René was a troublemaking sixteen-year-old, who spent his time hunting, fishing, and generally causing all kinds of outdoorsy mischief with a group of like-minded Auvers pals. Their hero was Buffalo Bill Cody, the American hunter and showman whose Buffalo Bill’s Wild West had performed to massive sold-out crowds in Paris just the year before, during 1889’s Exposition Universelle.

René Secrétan saw the Wild West show and fell utterly under the spell of all things cowboy. When his family moved to Auvers for the summer of 1890, René brought with him a much-prized costume consisting of a buckskin tunic, boots, and a cowboy hat, all purchased at great expense in Paris. But he felt the need to add a little more authenticity to his getup, so he supplemented it with one additional element: a 38-calibre pistol, which, according to René, was a real gun, but one that worked erratically. He used it to shoot birds and squirrels in the countryside, but it also did double-duty as a fairly convincing intimidation apparatus. You see, René wasn’t the nicest child in town. In fact, some of his favourite activities were to play pranks on the locals and to cause mayhem throughout the countryside. And in the summer of 1890, there was one particular person whom he especially enjoyed terrorizing. I’ll give you one guess who it was.

He also had an aunt that suffered with dizzy spells. She was called Vert Gogh

Madame F@nny La Fan from 'Allo 'Allo knew Van Gogh intimately

And his Uncle Wherediddy vanished without a trace.

It seems a local naughty kid was always trying to wind up Van Gogh, so Van Gogh teased him, and then the kid shot him??

Guys, if we could get to the bottom of this today and finally confirm either way, would be good

He was stabbed with an icepick shortly before

The bullet would've prob gone straight through him if he had shot himself which is what the history books say... But it didnt go straight through, the bullet stayed inside him.... someone shot him.... they didn't find the gun either. Anyway, is it hot where you are?? I'm boiling

He was feeling blue about the loss of his wife Indi

I remember Vincent ............

starry starry night .

comment by peks - 1974 (U6618)
posted 1 hour, 42 minutes ago
Madame F@nny La Fan from 'Allo 'Allo knew Van Gogh intimately
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Ear ear

comment by Boris 'Inky’ Gibson (U5901)
posted 1 hour, 28 minutes ago
He was stabbed with an icepick shortly before
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Like Marx and Trotsky.

comment by May Bell (U22849)
posted 1 hour, 19 minutes ago
The bullet would've prob gone straight through him if he had shot himself which is what the history books say... But it didnt go straight through, the bullet stayed inside him.... someone shot him.... they didn't find the gun either. Anyway, is it hot where you are?? I'm boiling
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Wet and cool in Belfast

comment by May Bell (U22849)
posted 1 hour, 20 minutes ago
The bullet would've prob gone straight through him if he had shot himself which is what the history books say... But it didnt go straight through, the bullet stayed inside him.... someone shot him.... they didn't find the gun either. Anyway, is it hot where you are?? I'm boiling
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Is that how he lost his hearing?

What?

Some like it 'OT ..........

comment by HarlequinHebdo (U16981)
posted 42 minutes ago
Some like it 'OT ..........
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good film that

Hey , nobodies poifect ! ...brilliant.

Hope the killer is brought to justice