Ah yes, The Mystery of Van Gogh’s Ear (BBC2, Saturday). He cut it off, didn’t he, in the south of France, and then he gave it to a girl? Yes, but who was she? How much of the ear did Vincent cut off – just the lobe, or the whole thing? What drove him to it? Did he even do it, or was it all tabloid sensationalism?
The reports in the Provence press at the time don’t agree on the story. The artist was both Dutch and Polish (Van Goghski?); the ear was in a package and he held it in place on his head; the girl was a prostitute and she wasn’t a prostitute … Shoddy journalism in Arles back in those days.
But now, Bernadette Murphy, an English art historian living in Provence, is determined to get to the bottom of it. She has spent seven years digging around in the records, drowning in bureaucracy, investigating this most perplexing and intriguing of art mysteries. And now Jeremy Paxman is joining her to find out what she’s got.
He – Paxman – isn’t the most natural with civilians. Maybe it’s to stop his arms waving around, windmilling like Peston, but he either folds them in front of him or puts his hands in his pockets. It comes across as a bit awkward and aloof.
Hey, he’s Paxo, what do you expect, huggy Jeremy? (God, imagine!). He is at least civil, doesn’t go into attack-dog mode, thankfully. He even sort of congratulates Murphy, if a little begrudgingly and curmudgeonly. “Not many of us can say we have contributed to … history really,” he says to her. “I suppose you have.”
It is a great detective story. Murphy’s doggedness and ability to slice through red tape pay off. She finds out the identity of the girl; she wasn’t a prostitute but a cleaner, called Gaby. Vincent may have met her in Paris, where she was being treated for a bite by a rabid dog, then followed her to Arles. And, in his distressed state, given her a piece of himself as an act of religious self-sacrifice and compassion. It does, says Jeremy, change the way you see his most famous paintings.
Vincent shot himself not long afterwards. But Gaby lived until 1952; her descendants still live in the area … though, sadly, they don’t want to be identified or to appear on camera. I don’t know why. Not only was Great Granny Gaby not a sex worker, but she was also such good mates with one of the greatest artists who ever lived, who cut his ear off for her. I’d be yelling it from rooftops.
Maybe they get scared when they look out of the window and see, folded into the front seat of Murphy’s little car, Paxman, whom they have seen on YouTube, interviewing Michael Howard. They simply can’t face being asked, 14 times, if they have still got it – the ear – somewhere, in the attic, in a box.
That’s not the end of it. Murphy’s sleuthing takes her to Paris and Amsterdam (where they say Van Gogh very differently from our way and the American way). And, finally, to California, where she gets her hands on a little drawing by the doctor who actually treated Vincent, that shows it wasn’t just the lobe that came off, it was the whole bloody ear, brutally severed.
Which contradicts two other eye-witness accounts – I don’t quite understand that – but it seems to satisfy the two bearded experts at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Ha, you may look a bit like him and know how to pronounce Van Gogh properly, but it took an amateur English researcher to uncover what has eluded you. Experts, who needs them, eh?
There’s a nice moment in Flying to the Ends of the Earth (Channel 4, Sunday). Likable former marine turned extreme aviator Arthur Williams is in the South Pacific, in Fiji. In a village, he spots a British army Air Corps photograph of a young man in uniform through a window. The man’s not around, but his auntie is.
Arthur asks her about what she thinks of young Fijians going half way round the world to serve in the British military. I think he is hoping to hear something about Fijians fighting in the British forces since the second world war and about the close bond that exists between the nations. “They go for money,” she tells him, and then has a good laugh about it with her friends.
