(Newser)
– The exact location where Vincent van Gogh painted his latest work has been pinpointed after having been hidden in plain sight for years among a tangle of roots along a country road near Paris. Experts say the discovery sheds new light on the distraught painter’s mental state on the day of 1890 in which he is widely believed to have been fatally shot. A Dutch researcher realized that the scene depicted in the troubled artist’s final work, “Tree Roots”, was visible on a faded postcard showing a man standing next to a bicycle on a back street in the village of Auvers-sur -Oise. Van Gogh spent the last weeks of his life in the village and completed dozens of paintings there. To help, the card even included the street name.
The discovery of Wouter van der Veen, scientific director of the Van Gogh Institute in France, offers a new vision of the artist in his last hours. “One thing that is very clear is that he spent a little more time working on this painting all afternoon. We know that because of the light drop at work,” museum director Emilie Gordenker told the AP in a telephone interview. “She really was working to the end.” According to the museum’s version of Van Gogh’s life, after working on “Tree Roots,” the artist entered a nearby wheat field during the day and shot himself in the chest with a gun. He died two days later at age 37. Van der Veen believes his discovery shows that Van Gogh had his wits about him before pulling the trigger. “It was a lucid decision. It was not an attack of madness.” (Read more about the discovery, including how the pandemic played a role in facilitating it, here.)
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