For just nine weeks, in late 1888, Van Gogh and Gauguin share a home, The Yellow House, in Arles, southern France. Approaching middle age and still flat broke, both men abandon respectability, family and friends to commit themselves utterly to painting, united by an unshakable belief in the importance of art.
In this brief period of penniless, fraught obscurity they produce between them over 40 acknowledged masterpieces, with a combined current value of almost a billion pounds. The relationship finally ends in an iconic and bloody climax, when Van Gogh cuts off his own ear. Eighteen months after leaving The Yellow House, Van Gogh shot himself, bleeding to death over several days. Years later, Gauguin died, a syphilitic, in self-imposed exile in Tahiti.
About the Yellow House >
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