Gachet," his friend the local doctor who later tried in vain to save his life. And you can tell from his letters how happy he was, his feeling of seeing something that's beautiful."Ĭarriere said Van Gogh painted some of his best work in his final days, including his "Portrait of Dr. He was painting practically a painting a day. "Yes, he had lots of challenges, no doubt about that," Dafoe told correspondent Serena Altschul. "Do I believe that van Gogh killed himself? Absolutely not!"ĭafoe spoke to CBS' "Sunday Morning" about the painter. He was not at all sad," Carriere said when the film premiered at the Venice film festival last year. The legendary French screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere - who co-wrote the script with Schnabel - insisted that there "is absolutely no proof he killed himself." The film's director, the renowned American painter Julian Schnabel, told AFP that van Gogh had painted 75 canvasses in his 80 days at Auvers-sur-Oise and was unlikely to be suicidal. A revolver believed to be the gun Dutch 19th century painter Vincent van Gogh used to kill himself on July 27, 1890, is seen on display at Paris' Drouot auction house on June 19, 2019. That theory won fresh support from a biopic of the artist starring Willem Dafoe, CBS Films' " At Eternity's Gate," in which the gun goes off after the two brothers get into a struggle with the bohemian stranger. While most art historians agree van Gogh killed himself, that assumption has been questioned in recent years, with some claiming the fatal shot may have been fired accidentally by two local boys playing with the weapon in the field. "All these clues give credence to the theory that this is the weapon used in the suicide." "Technical tests on the weapon have shown the weapon was used and indicate that it stayed in the ground for a period that would coincide with 1890," it said. Two years earlier, he cut off his ear, which he offered to a woman in a brothel in Arles, in southern France.Īuction Art said the farmer who found the gun in 1965 gave it to the former owners of the inn at Auvers-sur-Oise, whose family are now selling it. Nor was it his first dramatic act of self-harm. The bullet extracted from van Gogh's chest was the same caliber as the one used by the Lefaucheux revolver. He died 36 hours later after staggering back wounded to the inn in the dark. The gun believed to have been used by painter Vincent van Gogh to shoot himself on July 27, 1890, in Auvers-sur-Oise, France, is presented by Drouot auction house in Paris, June 14, 2019. The Dutch artist had borrowed the gun from the owner of the inn. While Art Auction, which sold the gun, said there is no way of being absolutely certain it is the fatal weapon, they insisted tests showed it has been in the ground for 75 years, which would fit.