Van Gogh's Funeral

Ok. I admit. I’m becoming gloomy. I think the universe has abandoned me. I have had no offers to trade.

Because misery loves company, I looked at a letter written by Emile Bernard, an artist who attended Van Gogh’s funeral. It is a magnificent letter, though of course a painfully sad one.

It too paints a portrait of Van Gogh.

He finally died on Monday evening, still smoking his pipe which he refused to let go of, explaining that his suicide had been absolutely deliberate and that he had done it in complete lucidity.

On the walls of the room where his body was laid out all his last canvases were hung making a sort of halo for him and the brilliance of the genius that radiated from them made this death even more painful for us artists who were there.

We climbed the hill outside Auvers talking about him, about the daring impulse he had given to art, of the great projects he was always thinking about, and of the good he had done to all of us.

Anyone would have started crying at that moment…the day was too much made for him for one not to imagine that he was still alive and enjoying it

He was, Gachet said, an honest man and a great artist who had only two aims: humanity and art.


Even Van Gogh’s funeral, it would seem, was beautiful.