Listen to a sample
Van Gogh's Ear
- Author
- Bernadette Murphy
- Narrator
- Su Douglas
- Publisher
- Random House
- Publish Date
- 12 July 2016
- Run Time
- 9 hours 27 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
Not available in your country
We don't have the rights to sell this audiobook where you are. If it's already in your library you can still listen to it in My Books.
What to expect
BOOK OF THE WEEK ON BBC RADIO 4
PRIMETIME BBC2 DOCUMENTARY WITH JEREMY PAXMAN
On a dark night in Provence in December 1888 Vincent van Gogh cut off his ear. It is an act that has come to define him. Yet for more than a century biographers and historians seeking definitive facts about what happened that night have been left with more questions than answers.
In Van Gogh’s Ear Bernadette Murphy sets out to discover exactly what happened that night in Arles. Why would an artist at the height of his powers commit such a brutal act? Who was the mysterious ‘Rachel’ to whom he presented his macabre gift? Was it just his lobe, or did Van Gogh really cut off his entire ear? Her investigation takes us from major museums to the dusty contents of forgotten archives, vividly reconstructing the world in which Van Gogh moved – the madams and prostitutes, café patrons and police inspectors, his beloved brother Theo and his fellow artist and house-guest Paul Gauguin. With exclusive revelations and new research about the ear and about ‘Rachel’, Bernadette Murphy proposes a bold new hypothesis about what was occurring in Van Gogh’s heart and mind as he made a mysterious delivery to her doorstep that fateful night.
Van Gogh’s Ear is a compelling detective story and a journey of discovery. It is also a portrait of a painter creating his most iconic and revolutionary work, pushing himself ever closer to greatness even as he edged towards madness – and one fateful sweep of the blade that would resonate through the ages.
Critics Review
-
This book has the pace of a detective novel, sending fresh blood pulsing through an old tale as Murphy recreates the heartbreaking drama of Van Gogh’s loosening grip on reality.
Daily Mail
-
Murphy’s revelations are fascinating and add intriguing details to the great crisis of Van Gogh’s life.
The Times
-
Murphy’s book rescues the real Van Gogh from the lazy clichés of tea towel memorabilia by painting an electric, nuanced portrait of a man who achieved artistic brilliance despite his mental health issues and not because of them. In doing so, she allows for a version of his history in which her subject’s passion for life, art and humanity blooms like the sunflowers he painted.
Daily Mail
-
She knows Provence with an intimacy that’s rare in the ear genre. Her descriptions of the people, their landscape, their customs are unusually detailed… Her second stand-out quality is a doggedness that goes beyond the usual art-historical drives. Relentlessly she wrestles with the book’s central mystery.
Sunday Times
See more reviews See fewer reviews
-
No one before has built up such a detailed picture of the people who surrounded the great artist.
Daily Telegraph
-
Legend has it that Van Gogh cut off the ear to send to a woman he loved, surely one of the most ineffective instances of flirting in cultural history. However, Murphy’s sleuthing allowed her to track down the girl that Van Gogh gave his ear to, who turned out to be a cleaner in a brothel. She also found a document drawn up by Dr Felix Rey, who cared for Van Gogh after the incident, which confirms that the ear was brutally severed.
Evening Standard
-
It is arguably the best-known story in the history of art: Vincent van Gogh lops off part of his ear in a moment of insanity and drops it off at a brothel. The facts behind how the artist mutilated himself and what happened next can now be told for the first time, according to experts, after crucial medical evidence was discovered. Bernadette Murphy, the researcher who discovered the letter and traced the family of the unknown girl, has now speculated that Van Gogh could have been offering his own flesh in a noble but deluded attempt to help heal her.
Daily Telegraph
-
The horror of Vincent van Gogh cutting off his ear in 1888 is one of the most famous incidents in art history...Now dramatic discoveries are painting the real story in a new light...When [Bernadette Murphy] presented her research to experts at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, they were astonished.
Daily Mail
-
A recently discovered letter from Félix Rey, the doctor who treated Van Gogh in the hospital...was found in an American archive by Bernadette Murphy. The discovery brings an end to a long-standing biographical question.
Artlyst
-
Bernadette Murphy...discovered a document in an American archive. A note written by Félix Rey, a doctor who treated van Gogh at the Arles hospital, contains a drawing of the mangled ear showing that the artist indeed cut off the whole thing. Murphy...was also able to identify the woman to whom van Gogh gave his ear.
New York Times
User Reviews
No reviews yet.
Details
- Author
- Bernadette Murphy
- Narrator
- Su Douglas
- Duration
- 9 hours 27 minutes
- Release Date
- 12 July 2016
- ISBN
- 9781473547797
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Random House
- Genre
- History of art, Individual artists, art monographs
Synopsis
BOOK OF THE WEEK ON BBC RADIO 4PRIMETIME BBC2 DOCUMENTARY WITH JEREMY PAXMANOn a dark night in Provence in December 1888 Vincent van Gogh cut off his ear. It is an act that has come to define him. Yet for more than a century biographers and historians seeking definitive facts about what happened that night have been left with more questions than answers.In Van Gogh’s Ear Bernadette Murphy sets out to discover exactly what happened that night in Arles. Why would an artist at the height of his powers commit such a brutal act? Who was the mysterious ‘Rachel’ to whom he presented his macabre gift? Was it just his lobe, or did Van Gogh really cut off his entire ear? Her investigation takes us from major museums to the dusty contents of forgotten archives, vividly reconstructing the world in which Van Gogh moved – the madams and prostitutes, café patrons and police inspectors, his beloved brother Theo and his fellow artist and house-guest Paul Gauguin. With exclusive revelations and new research about the ear and about ‘Rachel’, Bernadette Murphy proposes a bold new hypothesis about what was occurring in Van Gogh’s heart and mind as he made a mysterious delivery to her doorstep that fateful night.Van Gogh’s Ear is a compelling detective story and a journey of discovery. It is also a portrait of a painter creating his most iconic and revolutionary work, pushing himself ever closer to greatness even as he edged towards madness – and one fateful sweep of the blade that would resonate through the ages.
About xigxag
xigxag is an independent, UK-based audiobook platform and the UK's only B Corp certified audiobook company. We offer nearly 150,000 audiobooks, all with professional human narration. No AI-generated voices. xigxag is rated an Ethical Consumer Best Buy for audiobooks and a top-rated ethical bookshop.
There is no subscription. You buy the audiobooks you want, you own them permanently, and prices start at $13.95. The more you listen over the year, the less you pay per book, and there is always a selection in Listen for Less from $7.95. You can also send audiobooks as gifts using our audiobook gift cards or in-app gifting.
Every audiobook on xigxag has honest reviews covering both the book and the narration, and our community features make it easy to share what you are listening to, discover what others recommend, and find your next listen.
Download or stream on iOS, Android, or in your browser. Browse the full catalogue at xigxag.co.uk.