Vincent van Gogh cuts ear

The saturated colors of his works, the sunflowers and other still-lifes, masked Vincent van Gogh’s profoundly disturbed soul. From birth an excitable, self-conscious man, van Gogh grew up in the Netherlands the son of a pastor, his pre-artistic career including brief unsuccessful stints at an art gallery and a congregation for miners. Those unhappy experiences were on full display in one of his earliest and best-known works, The Potato Eaters. Van Gogh was acquainted with other well-known painters of the time, but none could help his deterioration. One fine night, in a fit of dementia, van Gogh made the act that demonstrated the depth of his dementia.

On this day, December 23, in 1888, a day which started off with van Gogh threatening Paul Gauguin with a knife or a razor (accounts differ) ended with him turning the blade on himself, slicing off a portion of his ear.

Van Gogh decided to make a present of his earlobe to a prostitute at a nearby bordello – who reportedly fainted at the sight of the unwrapped bloodied part. He then turned back home, and still bleeding, went to bed. That has been the commonly accepted story for years, although historians later began suggesting the ear may have been sliced off in a fencing duel with Gauguin, a keen fencer, and that van Gogh invented the story to protect his mentor.