Will the real Van Gogh please stand up

Vincent van Gogh spent a remarkably short span of time in the southern French town of Arles. The interval between him stepping off the train from Paris on 20 February 1888 and his departure for the asylum at Saint-Rémy on 8 May the following year was a scant 14-and-a-half months. For some of this time the painter was hospitalised and seriously ill, yet in this brief period he produced not just one, but several of the greatest pictures in the history of art.

It might be thought that there was nothing more to discover about Vincent in Arles, a subject that has been so discussed, investigated, dramatised and filmed over the years. But this year a flurry of fresh information has appeared. In the summer, strong evidence emerged in Van Gogh’s Ear, a book by Bernadette Murphy, about how much of that organ he had sliced off on the evening of 23 December 1888. It was not just a portion of lobe, as is often believed, but the whole damn thing.

Now, in Studio of the South: Van Gogh in Provence (Frances Lincoln, £25), Martin Bailey, an indefatigable and much-respected researcher into Van Gogh’s life and art, has lucidly marshalled the facts of the case, and added several fresh pieces of information.

One poignant detail he underlines is that, on the very day that Vincent descended into delirium and mutilated himself, his youngest sister Wil passed on a compliment from Jozef Israëls, a famous older Dutch artist. On seeing ‘Pink Peach Trees’, one of the paintings of orchards in blossom from the previous spring, Israëls exclaimed that Van Gogh was a ‘clever lad’.

This undercuts another persistent legend: that his work was neglected and derided during his lifetime.