Vincent van Gogh’s Death: Why Questions Still Remain

For more than a century, Vincent van Gogh’s death has been described as suicide. Yet the circumstances surrounding his final days have never stopped raising questions.

Van Gogh died in July 1890 after suffering a gunshot wound in Auvers-sur-Oise, France. He survived for roughly two days before dying, but the exact circumstances of how he was shot were never fully resolved. No gun was found at the scene, there were no known witnesses to the shooting itself, and later researchers have challenged parts of the traditional account.

Those uncertainties have helped turn Van Gogh’s death into one of art history’s most enduring mysteries. Was it truly suicide, as generations have been told? Or is there another explanation?

Why the Traditional Story Has Been Questioned

Several details have caused historians, biographers, and researchers to reconsider the accepted account of Van Gogh’s death. The firearm was not recovered at the time. There were no eyewitnesses who could describe the shooting. Questions have also been raised about the location and angle of the wound, and about whether Van Gogh’s movements after the shooting fit the traditional version of events. And why was no bullet found in Van Gogh's body?

More importantly, how significant are events which occurred long before Van Gogh even travelled to Auvers-sur-Oise, especially in the Gachet family and in the lives of the artists both Dr. Paul Gachet and his family knew, spent time with, and were influenced by, could possibly involve, even lead up to Van Gogh's tragic end?

What remains certain is that the historical record is incomplete. And where the record leaves gaps, questions remain.

When History Leaves Room for Another Possibility

Unanswered questions are often where historical fiction becomes most compelling. Fiction cannot replace evidence, but it can explore the possibilities left behind when the historical record is incomplete and even urge historians and investigators to search even harder for the answers.

That is the space explored in Cornwall Bannister’s Who Murdered VVG? Rather than simply retelling Van Gogh’s final days, the novel asks readers to consider what might have happened if the accepted story was not the whole story and more people were involved in Van Gogh's death than simply Vincent Van Gogh.

Through mystery and investigation, the novel turns a familiar historical event into a question: what if the truth is more complicated than the version history remembered?

Why the Question Still Matters

Van Gogh’s art has outlived the circumstances of his death, but the mystery surrounding his final days continues to fascinate readers, historians, and art lovers. Perhaps that is because unresolved history invites us to look again, to question what we think we know and to consider what may have been overlooked or hidden.

That spirit of inquiry is at the heart of Who Murdered VVG? by Cornwall Bannister. The novel does not claim to rewrite history. Instead, it asks readers to enter the uncertainty and imagine another possibility.

Was it suicide? Or was it murder?

Discover Who Murdered VVG? at ReplenishPublishing.com.