Vincent van Gogh: myths, madness and a new way of painting

A new exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum sets out to separate the artist’s late work from the myths surrounding his ‘madness’. But does a clinical interpretation of his paintings miss the mystery of his vision?

When Vincent van Gogh got out of hospital in January 1889, with a white bandage covering the place where his left ear had been, he immediately went back to work in his house next to a cafe in the southern French town of Arles. A still life he painted that month looks like a determined attempt to hold on to the things of this world, to quell his inner turbulence by concentrating on the solid facts of his life. Around a sturdy wooden table he has laid out a symbolic array of the simple pillars of his existence. Four onions. A medical self-help book. A candle. The pipe and tobacco he found steadying. A letter from his brother Theo. A teapot. And one more thing: a large, emptied bottle of absinthe.

Has he drunk the absinthe since leaving hospital? Does its emptiness represent a promise to swear off the stuff from now on?

Related: The whole truth about Van Gogh's ear, and why his 'mad genius' is a myth

Related: Science peers into Van Gogh's Bedroom to shine light on colors of artist's mind

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