Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)

Description of Vincent van Gogh’s painting "Self-Portrait with Severed Ear and Pipe"

Van Gogh’s name is most often associated by people far from art with the fact of his biography that he once cut off his ear. Some people laugh, others cringe, and others misunderstand, but usually they don’t go beyond that. In fact, the story is more worthy of sympathy than censure.

Van Gogh in his lifetime was not famous. He wasn’t even famous - he only managed to sell one painting in his lifetime. He was beggarly, he was persecuted, considered insane - because he continued to paint instead of finding a "normal" and "decent for a man" job - he happened to starve, buying paint instead of food.

A life full of deprivation eventually led him to a real madness. At the time he was visited by a friend, also an artist, Gauguin, and they happened to quarrel. Van Gogh went on a rampage, grabbed a razor and when the frightened friend left him, cut off his earlobe. What drove him to do this - no one knows, most likely the madness, which should have been sent somewhere.

"The self-portrait with severed ear is painted some time (not too much, perhaps) after these unpleasant events. It shows Van Gogh still blindfolded, with a pipe in his teeth, against a red-orange background that creates an unpleasant, crushing impression. He is wearing an overcoat, a warm winter fur hat, the pipe in his teeth emits smoke - it is drawn in the form of spirals and rings.

The artist’s eyes are slightly squinting, their gaze is unfocused and he looks in general like a man who is slightly out of his mind. Madness approaches him, and struggling with it, he paints pictures, trying to survive, but, as we all know, he will not succeed and he will end his life by suicide.

"Self-Portrait with a Severed Ear" is as if a formidable harbinger of this event, showing in advance how difficult it can be to fight a part of oneself and how tragic it is to lose this battle.