X. Was Gauguin able to accomplish such a precise strike with his sword?

 

Gauguin was an excellent fencer. He held the title of "Maître d'armes civiles" and possessed several sharp dueling weapons. It is documented that he challenged an adversary to a duel at least twice in his lifetime. We know also that he brought his fencing equipment with him to Arles.
In his memoirs (Avant et Après), he dedicates a long passage to his fencing career and skills (Intimated Journals, p. 91 – 95): He had learned the art of fencing at the "Institut Loriol", a preparatory school of the French navy at Joinville-le-Pont, and also at the Salle Hyacinthe in Paris. One of his masters there was the famous Augustin Grisier (1791 – 1865) who had taught sabre fencing even to the son of the Russian Tsar in St. Petersburg. During his stay in Pont-Aven (Brittany), Gauguin also gave fencing lessons, together with the local fencing master whom he claimed he helped improving his technique (Gauguin himself certainly also thought highly of his skill).

Therefore, it should not have been a problem for Gauguin to cut off Van Gogh's ear with a precise sabre strike without hurting Vincent's neck or shoulder. Besides, on that cold winter night Van Gogh was certainly wearing his thick green jacket that might have protected him. It might also have been a coincidence that the ear was hit when Gauguin waved his weapon in the direction of his agitated colleague. Both versions are feasible (either a deliberate and precise hit, or an accidental injury) and we will probably never know which is right. The fact remains, it was Gauguin who caused the injury. Besides, it is remarkable that in both his reports Gauguin stresses the fact that the ear was cut off "in a clear cut" and "close to the head". It almost seems like he was secretly proud of the precision of his hit.

  

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a hasty escape

  • Gauguin was eager to leave Arles as fast as possible. The situation had become too hot for him. After having alerted Vincent’s brother Theo by wire, he left for Paris that evening of the same day, 24 December 1888. In his hasty departure, he left behind not only his wounded friend and the Yellow House, but also most of his personal belongings such as studies, sketchbooks, some of his fencing equipment masks and gloves, even his keys
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Vincent van Gogh and the series La Berceuse, Arles 1888–1889.

The period that Vincent van Gogh spent in Arles and Saint-Rémy from 1888 to 1890 undoubtedly belongs to the most creative phase of his artistic career. The existence of the almost identical paintings of Madame Augustine Roulin, the wife of the Arles postmaster, is consequently all the more surprising.
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The Corpus Delicti Is a Corpuscle

  • It can be said that with the exception of the sister-in-law Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, who had family-related reasons for playing down the injury, not a single witness speaks of a severed earlobe. On the contrary, the mutually independent statements by the principal witness Paul Gauguin, the prostitute who was given the ear, the gendarme who was on duty in the red-light district, the investigating police officer and the local newspaper report, accord with the evidence that the artist’s unfortunate “self-mutilation” involves the entire (left) ear.
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