GrayMouser
10-18-2011, 05:03 AM
A theory put out by a new biography of van Gogh says he was probably shot accidentally by a kid with a penchant for cowboy costumes and real guns:eek:
They think that the fatal shot was fired by an adventurous 16-year-old boy named Rene Secretan, who was spending the summer at a villa nearby and whose complex relationship with Van Gogh included buying drinks for him and baiting him mercilessly. Secretan liked to wear a cowboy costume brought from Paris, which he accessorised with a real gun, an erratic old .380 calibre pistol, for shooting squirrels, birds and fish.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts/a-new-biograph-of-vincent-van-gogh-shows-he-did-not-commit-suicide-but-was-shot-by-a-teen-with-a-faulty-gun/story-e6frg8nf-1226168323396
I'd always known he was supposed to have committed suicide, but I never heard about him shooting himself in the chest until a few weeks ago- I thought at the time it seemed a really bad way to go about it, but I put it down to him being so screwed up.
They think that the fatal shot was fired by an adventurous 16-year-old boy named Rene Secretan, who was spending the summer at a villa nearby and whose complex relationship with Van Gogh included buying drinks for him and baiting him mercilessly. Secretan liked to wear a cowboy costume brought from Paris, which he accessorised with a real gun, an erratic old .380 calibre pistol, for shooting squirrels, birds and fish.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts/a-new-biograph-of-vincent-van-gogh-shows-he-did-not-commit-suicide-but-was-shot-by-a-teen-with-a-faulty-gun/story-e6frg8nf-1226168323396
I'd always known he was supposed to have committed suicide, but I never heard about him shooting himself in the chest until a few weeks ago- I thought at the time it seemed a really bad way to go about it, but I put it down to him being so screwed up.