Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear

A man clad in a heavy green coat and a winter cap trimmed with black fur.
A thick white bandage is wound painfully from the right side of his head to beneath his chin.

His gaze reaches beyond the frame, staring directly at us.
His expression is rigid, held in profound silence.

December 1888, Arles in the south of France.
Van Gogh clashed with Gauguin and severed his own ear.

This painting was created in the immediate aftermath.
For that reason, it is often thought to have been painted impulsively, in the grip of madness.
Or so one might assume.

Yet the truth is quite different.
This is not a record of a deranged mind.
It is an indomitable declaration, conceived with remarkable calm and calculation.

On the night of the incident,
overcome by frenzy following a fierce argument, he cut off his own ear.

Wrapping the severed ear in paper, he went to a brothel.
There, he handed it to Gabrielle Berlatier, a young woman working as a cleaner.

The next morning, he was found unconscious from severe blood loss.
He was rushed to the hospital in Arles,
where he was treated by Dr. Félix Rey, a young intern, and his colleagues.

For many years, it was said that he had merely sliced off a small piece of his earlobe.
In 2016, however,
a sketch drawn by Dr. Rey was discovered.

It revealed a devastating reality, showing that only a tiny fragment of the earlobe had been spared.
Nearly the entirety of his left ear had been sliced away.

A catastrophic wound.
Gauguin left, and the dream of their communal life collapsed.

His livelihood depended entirely on allowances sent by his brother Theo from Paris.
He was profoundly broken, both in body and spirit.

Yet on January 7, 1889, he was discharged.
He returned to his studio in the "Yellow House," the very setting of the tragedy.

In January, Arles is whipped by the cold, fierce winds of the mistral.
Inside his poorly heated room,
he wrapped himself in a heavy green coat.

Holding the heavy dressing firmly in place with a blue cap,
he stood before the mirror.

Because he painted his own reflection, the bandage appears on the right side of the canvas.
In reality, it was his left ear that he had severed.