All language subtitles for Painted With Words English

The myth of Vincent
van Gogh, the mad artist,

has captivated us for
over a century now.

Today, his paintings are among the most
recognizable and valuable in the world.

My brush goes between
my fingers as if it were

the bow on a violin, and
absolutely for my pleasure.

But his work has often been
eclipsed by his reputation as a madman.

Let me quietly continue my work.

If it's that of a madman,
well, then too bad.

I can't do anything about it.

It is an incredible
story, but the true story of

Vincent van Gogh is in the
902 letters he left behind.

The vast majority written
to his brother Theo,

who became his
confidant and his lifeline.

It's from these letters
that this film is made,

using only van Gogh's words and
those of the people around him.

Every word spoken is true.

On the night of December the 23rd,
1888, Vincent van Gogh suffered an acute

mental breakdown and
cut off part of his left ear,

which he presented to a
prostitute in his favorite brothel.

The police discovered him lying in
a pool of blood in his bedroom

and committed him here
to the local hospital in Arles,

where he was
placed in an isolation cell.

My dear Theo, where can I go
that's worse than where I've already been?

Shut up for long days under lock
and key and in the isolation cell.

Physically I'm well, the
wound is closing very well.

And the great loss of
blood is balancing out.

The most
fearsome thing is the insomnia.

I feel weak, a little anxious, fearful.

My dear brother, I do so wish
that you could tell me how you feel.

It breaks my heart to know that now
you will actually have very bad days.

I remain your brother
who loves you, Theo.

Vincent's childhood was the
product of a strict Calvinist upbringing.

His father was a minister in
the Dutch Reform Church, and

he was brought up in Zundert,
a small town in the Netherlands.

He was sent away to boarding
school, where he was taught

the rudiments of drawing and
excelled in foreign languages.

He left at the age of
16, when he started an

apprenticeship with the
international art dealers, Goupil.

Three years later, Theo
followed in his footsteps.

This is where the letters begin.

Vincent was 19 years old, and Theo just 15.

My dear Theo, I'm so
glad that both of us are now

in the same line of business
and in the same firm.

We must correspond often.

The love between two
brothers is a great support in life.

That's an age old truth.

Let the fire of love between
us not be extinguished, but

let instead the experience of
life make that bond even stronger.

Let us remain upright.

Let there be no secrets
as things stand today.

In May 1873,
Vincent was transferred to

Goupil's London office
and moved to Brixton.

Once settled, he developed a passion for
English popular art, as seen in the black

and white prints in the
graphic and illustrated

London News, eventually
collecting 1,000 of them.

In my view, prints like these,
together, form a kind of Bible for

an artist, in which he reads
now and again to get into a mood.

For me, the English draftsmen are what
Dickens is in the sphere of literature.

Noble and healthy and something
one always comes back to.

Amongst his collection was
this print of Dickens' Empty Chair.

The social realist subject
matter of the prints and

Dickens' writings about
London's working class, living

in squalid poverty, left a
lasting impression on Vincent.

There's such a yearning for religion
among the people in those big cities.

Many a worker in a factory or a shop
has had a remarkably pious, pure youth.

The pulpit, where the minister
delivered unquestioned doctrine and

swayed to and fro, and handled the
book in a long-accustomed manner.

Reading George Eliot's
novels about English evangelism

reminded Vincent of his own
upbringing in a religious home.

Wanting now to follow
in his father's footsteps,

he immersed himself
in the study of the Bible.

But his preoccupation
with religion led him to

neglect his duties in the
art firm, so he was fired.

He now tried to get a position
as a teacher's assistant,

hoping this would help him reach
his goal of entering the church.

Herewith, a little drawing of the view
from the school window, where the boys

stand and watch their parents
going back to the station after a visit.

Determined to make himself useful
to those he saw suffering around him,

Vincent taught Sunday school to children
from the London markets and streets.

And on the 12th of November,
1876, he delivered his first sermon.

The journey of our
life->> Theo, your brother

spoke for the first time in
God's house last Sunday.

When I stood up on the pulpit,
I felt like someone emerging out of

a dark underground vault into the friendly
daylight, and it's a wonderful feeling.

When Vincent returned to Holland,

his father agreed to support his
preparation to enter the ministry.

But he struggled with his
studies and quit after a year.

The only option left to
him was missionary work.

And in January, 1879, he
was appointed as a lay preacher

in the Borinage, a coal
mining district in Belgium.

Going down in a mine
is an unpleasant business.

In a kind of basket or
cage like a bucket in a well.

The workers get used to it, but

even so they never shake off an
unconquerable feeling of horror and dread.

Vincent was truly sickened
by the plight of the miners' lives.

Nursing the sick and injured became
just as important to him as preaching.

But once again, after his six-month
trial, he failed to make the grade.

Vincent was jobless once more.

Money troubles and poverty
have something to do with it.

Now you say from such
and such a time you've been

going downhill, you've faded
away, you've done nothing.

Now that being so, what's to be done?

Theo worried about his brother, but
recognizing a talent in Vincent's sketches

of the miners encouraged him to
apply himself more seriously to art.

My plan is not to spam myself, not to
avoid a lot of difficulties and emotions.

It's of a relative indifference to me
whether I live a long or short time.

I'm concerned with the world only
in that I have a certain obligation or

duty, if you like, having walked
the world for 30 years, to leave

a souvenir of gratitude in the
form of paintings or drawings.

After years in the wilderness,
Vincent had finally found his vocation.

And amazingly, he was entirely self-taught.

And all his letters from now on document
his single-minded immersion in art.

Drawing is the root of everything.

I feel the need to study figure
drawing from masters like Millet.

In art, one must give one's
heart and soul, he says.

I've already drawn the sower five times and

I'm so completely absorbed in
that figure, I will take it up again.

If I succeed in putting
some warmth and love

into the work, then
it will find friends.

Although Vincent was
able to put love into his work,

it was proving difficult
to find in his life.

He was back home, living with his parents.

His widowed cousin,
Keeve Os, came to visit the

parsonage, and Vincent
fell madly in love with her.

From the beginning of this love,
I felt that unless I threw myself into it

unreservedly, committing myself to
it wholeheartedly, fully and forever,

then there'd be absolutely
no chance for me.

But this love was not reciprocated.

And it embarrassed his parents,
who thought he was shaming the family.

His uncle forbade
Vincent from seeing Keeve.

But he bombarded her with letters.

And then->> I went to Amsterdam.

There I was told your
persistence is sickening.

I put my fingers in the
flame of a lamp and said,

let me see her for as long
as I hold my hand in the flame.

But they blew out the lamp
and said, you shall not see her.

To love, what a business.

Vincent set out for The Hague,
the center of the Dutch art world.

I had a rather violent argument
with Pa, and feelings ran so

high that Pa said it would
be better if I left home.

I was angrier than I've ever
remembered being in my whole life.

And I told Pa plainly that I found the
whole system of that religion loathsome.

I want nothing more to do with it.

Now, without an income
or a home, he turned to Theo.

It goes without saying that I'm
asking you, Theo, if you can do it.

Send me now and then what
you can without going short yourself.

Let me send you my work, and
you take what you want from it.

But I insist that I
may consider the money I

would receive from you
as money I have earned.

I hope to do as much as I can to
help you until you start earning yourself.

But what I don't like is the way
you've contrived to leave Pa and Ma.

The devil made you so childish.

It's your duty to set
things straight at all costs.

Upon arrival in The Hague, Vincent
set himself up in a small studio and

got a commission for
a series of cityscapes,

sketching all aspects of
the modern metropolis.

And Vincent, wanting to enjoy
all the pleasures of city life,

soon found himself in hospital for a few
weeks, undergoing treatment for syphilis.

And then->> This winter
I met a pregnant woman

who had been abandoned by the
man whose child she was carrying.

A pregnant woman, wandering the
streets in winter, earning her bread.

You can imagine how.

I took that woman as a model, and I
worked with her the whole of the winter.

Her name was Klazina Maria
Hornik, better known as Scene.

A woman older than Vincent.

She was a seamstress who
supplemented her income with prostitution.

But all the same, I have paid
her rent, and until now I've been able,

thank God, to preserve
her and her child from

hunger and cold by sharing
my own bread with her.

When I met this woman, she caught
my eye because she looked so ill.

To me, she is beautiful.

She posed for my very best drawing, Sorrow.

I want to make drawings
that move some people.

Sorrow is a small beginning.

At least it contains something
straight from my own feelings.

I couldn't draw sorrow
if I didn't feel it myself.

This other one, Roots, is
some tree roots in sandy ground.

I've tried to imbue the landscape
with the same sentiment as the figure.

In all of nature, trees, for
instance, I see expression and soul.

This relationship generated
even more disgust in the family

than Vincent's earlier infatuation with
Key, and once again, he was penniless.

Theo was just as scandalized and
refused to send any extra money.

With Vincent unable to support a family,

Scene decided to go back to
prostitution once the baby was born.

But I shall continue
to think of her often.

And so Vincent left and
went deep into rural Holland

to live and paint
among the peasants.

What I think is the
best life is a life made up of

long years of being in touch
with nature out of doors.

Here are a couple of evening effects.

I'm still working on that weed burner.

And one muddy evening
after the rain, I found a little hut,

which was very beautiful
in its natural setting.

But living in such an isolated place,
loneliness soon bore down on him.

Alone, one is sure to perish.

Only with another can one be saved.

The very best and most effective
medicine is still love and a home.

So home he went,
depressed and broke,

and with his tail between his
legs, to live with his parents again.

We agreed that he will stay with us
for the time being to make studies here.

He wanted the outhouse
to be fitted up for him.

We don't think it's a particularly suitable
place, but we've had it spruced up.

Now we should just make it nice and
warm and dry, and then it should do.

It's a similar reluctance
about taking me into the house

as there would be about having
a large shaggy dog in the house.

He'll come into the room with his
wet paws, and then he's so shaggy,

he'll get in everyone's
way, and bark so loud.

In short, he's a filthy animal.

Despite the difficulties at
home, it was around this time

that Vincent came
into his own as an artist,

starting with the
drawings of local weavers.

I think the looms were that
quite complicated machinery...

in the middle of which
sits the little figure...

who also lend themselves
to pen drawings.

Vincent was then under the influence
of the Dutch painters Anton Moeve and

Joseph Israels, celebrated for their
peasant paintings and their grey and

brown palette, very different
from the revolutionary

impressionist paintings, which
Theo had written to Vincent about.

From what you say about impressionism,

it's not entirely clear to me what
one's supposed to understand by it.

I'm not particularly curious or eager
for something different or newer.

Nevertheless, Vincent was
becoming increasingly interested in color,

fascinated by what he
saw emerging on the looms.

When the weavers weave those fabrics,

they try to get the very brightest
colors in balance against one another in

the multicolored targets, so that
rather than the fabric clashing,

the overall effect is
harmonious from a distance.

So now, Vincent starts to
introduce shards of color into his work.

In landscapes, and then in a
series of portraits of local peasants.

I have a few of the
heads I promised you.

They are studies in the
true meaning of the word.

I've already painted at least 30 or so.

At the same time, I'm working on those
peasants around a dish of potatoes again.

You see, I really wanted
to make it so that...

people get the idea
that these folk eating their

potatoes by the light of
the little lamp on the table,

they have tilled the earth themselves with
these hands they are putting in the dish.

And so the whole thing
speaks of manual labor,

and thus they have
honestly earned their food.

Admiration certainly
didn't come from Theo,

or from Vincent's friend and fellow
artist, one Anton van Rappard.

My dear friend, you can do
better than this, fortunately.

That coquettish little hand of
that woman at the back, how untrue.

And what connection is
there between the coffee pot

and the hand lying
on top of the handle?

What's that pot doing?

It isn't standing.

It isn't being held.

But what then?

And why may that man
on the left not have a knee?

And why must his arm be a meter too short?

And why must he lack half of his nose?

Art is too important, it seems to
me, to be treated so cavalierly.

But the contemptuous
critique of van Gogh's masterpiece

wasn't the only matter
featured in van Rappard's letter.

The news of the death of your father
came so unexpectedly

that I very much wanted some further
message, which didn't come, however.

Vincent hardly mentions the death
of his father in the letters at the time.

But despite the difficulties
of their relationship,

he was nevertheless
affected by the news.

And he painted his father's Bible.

Sending her a still life of an
open, hence an off-white Bible.

Bound in leather against
a black background.

Painted this one in a single day.

And tellingly, Vincent placed
next to his father's Bible,

a book by the French
novelist Emile Zola,

the supreme chronicler of the
oppressed and tormented working class.

Vincent saw in Zola a kindred spirit,

embracing the social purpose of art as well
as the artistic interpretation of reality.

Read lots of Zola.

It's healthy stuff, clears the mind.

The next part of his journey
would take him to the epicentre

of the art world, leaving the
Netherlands far behind him.

Vincent arrived in Paris in February
1886, when the art scene was in transition.

Impressionism had been
dominant for over a decade,

but now the hunt
was on for something new.

Vincent intended to immerse
himself in the artistic life of the city,

and moved to Montmartre with
Theo into this house at 54 Rue Lepic.

Fortunately, we're doing
well in our new home.

You no longer recognise
Vincent, his change so much.

And that strikes others even more than me.

What I hope to achieve is
to paint a good portrait anyway.

For inspiration, he turned
to the Dutch master Rembrandt,

who painted more than
90 self-portraits from the

outset of his career to the
year of his death in 1669.

So Rembrandt painted angels.

He paints himself as an old man,
wrinkled, toothless, wearing a white cap.

In the first, painting
from life in the mirror...

he dreams, dreams, and his brush
begins to paint his own portrait again.

But from memory, and...
his expression is sadder.

And more saddening.

For my own part, my
fortunes dictate that I'm making

rapid progress in becoming
a little old man myself.

Vincent started his self-portrait series

with the dark brown colours
he'd been accustomed to.

But gradually, his colour
and brushwork changed

as he came under the influence of
the new art that he saw around him.

The paintings become
lighter and more colourful.

My intention is to show
that a variety of very

different portraits can be
made by the same person.

The painter of the future is a colourist
as there has never been before.

He hasn't yet sold any
paintings for money,

but exchanges his
work for other paintings.

To give you an example, hardly a day passes

without him being invited to visit
the studios of painters of repute.

Or people come to him.

Vincent, who was socially awkward,
had little appetite for these gatherings

or for the competitive
environment it fostered.

But there was one artist who,
like him, stood out from the crowd.

His name was Paul Gauguin, and he shared
with Vincent a passion for Japanese prints.

This was the art form that transfixed
the Western world in the late 19th century.

Japanese prints are
certainly the most practical way

of getting to understand the direction
that painting has taken at present.

Colourful and bright.

Theo and I have hundreds of them.

At first, he simply
started to copy the prints.

Then he began to
experiment with his own work,

cropping objects at the edges
and introducing strong diagonals.

And Japanese prints started
to appear in the background in

several of his portraits,
including this one of Père Tanguy.

However, other Parisian
indulgences were not so beneficial.

Vincent was drinking
large amounts of absinthe.

The bohemian lifestyle was
damaging his already fragile health,

and his relationship with Theo
was becoming seriously strained.

It's as if there were two people in him.

One marvelously
gifted, and sensitive, and gentle,

and the other
self-loving and unfeeling.

There was a time when I
loved Vincent very much

and he was my best
friend, but that's over now.

Vincent had had enough
of the quarrels with Theo

and of the artistic
egos of the avant-garde.

Longing for the peace of
the countryside, he left Paris

in February 1888 and headed
south to Arles in Provence.

I want to begin by telling
you that this part of the world

seems to me as beautiful
as Japan for the clearness

of the atmosphere and the
charm of the colour effect.

The pale orange sunsets,
making the fields almost blue.

Glorious yellow suns.

Soon after his arrival, Vincent moved
into the yellow house on Place Lamartine

and set to work at once, experimenting
with an increasingly vivid palette,

convinced that this
would be his artistic legacy.

If only I had known this country
at 25 instead of coming here at 35.

But then I was enthusiastic about
grey and, or rather, absence of colour.

Oh, but this.

I don't need Japanese prints here because
I'm always saying to myself, "I'm in Japan.

I hope to make real progress
this year, which I really need to do.

However, working alone
for days on end took its toll.

From the letters, it's clear that he
was suffering from bipolar disorder.

So many days pass without
me saying a word to anyone,

except to order
supper or a coffee.

It's been like that from the start.

For my part, it worries me to
spend so much time by myself.

Alone.

"My dear old Gauguin..."

"I have just rented a
four-room house here in Arles."

"It seems to me that
if I could find a painter

who wanted to make
the most out of the South

and was sufficiently absorbed in his work
like me to be inclined to live like a monk,

bound up in his work and
not inclined to waste his time,

then the thing
would be very good."

"And you would give my
brother one painting a month

while you'd be free to do
whatever you like with the rest."

In the hope of living in
a studio with Gauguin,

I'd like to do a
decoration for the studio.

Nothing but large sunflowers.

I also did a canvas of my bedroom
with the white wood furniture

that, you know, it amused me
enormously, doing this bare interior.

My aim was to give it
colours like stained glass.

Gauguin finally arrived on
the 23rd of October, 1888.

Turquoise, a vibrant, alive
turquoise, as if the sea was bubbling...

A few days later, the two artists set off

for the nearby Roman
cemetery at Les Alicons,

intent on depicting the
same subject side by side.

Vincent painted what
he saw and what he felt.

The industrial scene in the
background is framed by the trees.

By contrast, Gauguin had
little time for reality.

He painted as a rule from memory.

And in the time it took Gauguin to complete
this picture, slowly and methodically,

Vincent, at top speed,
had knocked out two more.

Gauguin, in spite of himself,
and in spite of me...

has proved to me a little it
was time to change things a bit.

I am now working from memory.

And all my earlier studies
will still be useful for that work.

And one of these was a subject he
painted again and again - the sower.

Now the influence of
Gauguin can clearly be seen.

Immense lemon-yellow disc for the sun.

Green-yellow sky with pink clouds.

The field is violet.

The sower and the tree Prussian blue.

But Vincent found it difficult
painting purely from memory

and soon returned to
subjects directly in front of him.

The last two studies are
rather funny canvases.

A wooden and straw chair, all
yellow on red tiles against a wall.

Then Gauguin's armchair, red and green.

Night effect.

On the seat, two novels and a candle.

On sailcloth and thick in pastel.

But it wasn't long before tensions
developed between the two artists.

He started to drink heavily again.

His behaviour was becoming odder and odder.

And after just eight weeks,
Gauguin became exasperated.

I feel completely disorientated now.

I find everything so small and mean.

About the landscape and the people.

In general, Vincent and
myself do not see eye to eye,

particularly on painting.

Ah, he likes my pictures very much.

But when I'm painting them,
he criticises me for this and that.

Vincent and I can absolutely not
live side by side without trouble.

A few days later, the two artists
got into a heated argument.

It was so bizarre, I couldn't take it.

He even asked me,
"Are you going to leave?"

I felt I must go out alone
and take the air along

some paths, when I heard
behind me a familiar step.

Short, quick, irregular.

I turned around on that instant.

As Vincent rushed towards
me, an open razor in hand.

Vincent returned to the yellow house,

where, with perhaps the
very same knife that he

threatened Gauguin with,
he mutilated his left ear.

I wouldn't exactly have chosen
madness, had there been a choice.

But once one has something like
that, one can't catch it any more.

From his hospital room,
Vincent painted this self-portrait,

one of the most arresting
works of art in the world.

The advantages I have
here are that they are all sick.

And so, at least,
I don't feel alone.

Quite absorbed in
reading Shakespeare.

Richard II, Henry IV,
Henry V, parts of Henry VI.

Have you ever read King Lear?

But, anyway, I think I shan't urge you
too much to read such dramatic stories.

And after reading them myself, I...

I'm always obliged to go and gaze at
a blade of grass... pine tree branch...

an ear of wheat...

to calm myself.

After five months in hospital, mindful,
perhaps, of his precarious mental state,

he was reluctant to return
home alone to the yellow house.

And with Theo's help, he
voluntarily admitted himself

to the nearby asylum at Saint-Rémy.

"Dear Director, I am writing
to request the admission

into your institution of
Vincent Willem van Gogh.

I hope you will have no objection
to allowing him the freedom

to paint outside your institution
whenever he wishes to do so.

Further, I hope you will
be so kind as to allow him

to have at least half a
litre of wine with his meals."

Vincent arrived here at
Saint-Rémy on the 8th of May, 1889,

where he would
remain for a year.

As far as I know, the doctor
here is inclined to consider

what I've had as an
attack of an epileptic nature.

It's quite odd, perhaps, that
the result of this terrible attack is

that in my mind there's hardly
any really clear desire or hope left.

I'm thinking of squarely accepting
my profession as a madman.

There were days, sometimes
weeks, when Vincent was

unable to work, tormented
by spells of mental illness.

But these alternated with
periods of amazing creativity,

and he sent dozens of
paintings to Theo in Paris.

"Thanks very much for the
consignment of canvases, colours,

brushes, tobacco and chocolate,
which reached me in good order.

I was very glad of it, for I
was pining for work a little."

Also, for a few days now, I've been
going outside to work in the neighbourhood.

What a beautiful land, and what
beautiful blue, and what a sun!

So then my brush goes
between my fingers, as if it were

the bow on a violin, and
absolutely for my pleasure.

Struggling with a canvas begun
a few days before my indisposition.

A reaper, and the studies, all in yellow,

terribly thickly impasted, but
the subject was beautiful, simple.

A vague figure,
struggling like a devil in the

full heat of the day to
reach the end of his toil.

And then saw the image of death in it.

In the sense that humanity would
be like the wheat being reaped.

So, if you like, it's the
opposite of the sower

I tried before, but in
this death, nothing sad.

It takes place in broad
daylight with a sun that...

floods everything
with a light of fine gold.

Your latest paintings have given
me a great deal to think about,

as regards your state of
mind when you made them.

All of them have a power of colour
which you haven't attained before,

which in itself
is a rare quality.

But you've gone further.

But how hard your mind must have worked,

and how you endangered yourself to the
extreme point where vertigo is inevitable.

Included here, a square
canvas, the starry sky.

Actually painted at
night under a gas lamp.

The fields are mauve,
the town is blue and violet.

Two small coloured figures
of lovers in the foreground.

He's an odd fellow, but
what a head he has on him.

Let me quietly continue my work.

If it's that of a madman,
well, then too bad.

And then I can't
do anything about it.

Vincent stayed at
Saint-Rémy for over a year,

but he began to fear being
labelled 'the mad artist'.

So, once again, he asked Theo for help.

I don't feel confident enough to judge
the way that they treat patients here,

and nor do I have any
desire to enter into the details,

but please remember
that around six months ago,

I warned you that if I
was seized by a crisis of

a similar nature, that I would
wish to change asylums.

And I've delayed too long already, having
allowed an attack to go by in the meantime.

I was in the middle of work
and I wanted to finish canvases

in progress, otherwise I
would no longer be here by now.

Right, so, I'm going to
tell you that it seems to me

that a fortnight, though a
week would please me more,

should be enough to take
the necessary steps to move.

During his stay in the home, this
patient, who is calm for most of the time,

has had several attacks, lasting
for between two weeks and a month.

During these attacks, he
is subject to terrifying terrors

and has, on several occasions,
attempted to poison himself,

either by swallowing colours that he
used for painting or by ingesting paraffin,

which he had taken from the
boy when he was filling his lamps.

In the interval between attacks,
the patient is perfectly calm and lucid

and passionately
devotes himself to painting.

He is asking to be discharged today in
order to go and live in the north of France,

hoping that that climate
will suit him better.

In May 1890, he moved
to Auvers, close to Paris,

with a letter of introduction
from Theo to a Dr Paul Gachet.

And he rented an attic room
here at the Auvers-Gravoux.

Being back north, I am very distracted.

I did a portrait of Dr
Gachet the other day.

You have a face, the colour of
overheated and sun-drenched brick

with reddish hair, a white
cap, blue background.

He's very nervous and very bizarre.

My portrait of myself
is almost like this too.

When one blind man leads another,
don't they both fall into the ditch?

Although Vincent
doubted Dr Gachet's ability

to help him, they did
become good friends.

But despite the doctor's
sympathetic ear, Vincent is still alone.

Since my illness, the feelings of
loneliness takes hold of me in the fields

in such a fearsome way
that I hesitate to go out.

With time, though, that will change.

It's only in front of the easel while
painting that I feel a little of life.

I feel...

a failure.

But it is regards me.

I feel that that's the
fate I am accepting...

..and which won't change any more.

I feared, not completely,
but a little nonetheless...

that I was a danger to
you...

living at your expense.

Perhaps I'd like to write
to you about many things.

Professor, desire has passed to such a
degree that I feel the pointlessness of it.

I'm applying myself to my
canvases with all my attention.

There are immense stretches of
wheat fields under turbulent skies.

And I made a point of
trying to express sadness.

Extreme loneliness.

Look after yourself.

And handshakes in thought.

Yours truly...

Vincent.

Four days after writing
his final letter to Theo,

he went into the wheat fields
and shot himself in the chest.

He managed to crawl back here and
climb these stairs to his attic room...

where he died two days later, at
the age of 37, with Theo at his side.

Vincent said, "This is
the way I would like to go."

And half an hour
later, he had his way.

Life weighed so heavily upon him.

But, as always happens, everyone
is now full of praise for his talent.

Perhaps the only person
who really understood Vincent,

in his lifetime,
was his brother, Theo,

who died just six months
later of syphilis at the age of 33.

They're now buried here,
side by side in Auvers.

The ivy, which seems to
overwhelm their graves,

also serves to bind them together.