Poslední Vincentův obraz – Jaeglé Marianne (2022)

This Czech-language biographical novel begins in Auvers-sur-Oise, now on the outskirts of Paris, on the evening of 27 July 1890, when Vincent van Gogh returns from the fields mortally wounded. Two days later, he dies in the presence of his brother Theo. His words, “I injured myself in the fields…,” have traditionally been understood as evidence of a suicide attempt, but Marianne Jaeglé offers a surprising alternative: what if the famous painter did not try to kill himself, but was shot? Drawing on studies by respected historians Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, the novel reconstructs the final two years of van Gogh’s life and, like the 2017 film Loving Vincent, questions established theories about his tragic death. Rather than providing a dry sequence of events, Jaeglé conveys both the outward circumstances of Vincent’s life and an intimate insight into his mind. The reader experiences his grievances and sense of being misunderstood, as well as his ecstatic response to the colours of the sky, fields, flowers and southern sunlight and to the authentic details of everyday life. The novel also evokes van Gogh’s major works in just a few words, bringing their famous images and subjects to life, and captures his complicated relationship with Paul Gauguin, who stays with him for several weeks in his Yellow House in Arles before leaving in haste and disappointing Vincent’s hopes of a creative partnership and an artists’ school. This new perspective challenges the familiar image of a madman with a severed ear and presents van Gogh as a sensitive, shy and withdrawn person, an exceptional genius misunderstood by his time and isolated within a prejudiced society.