Q: So today I was driving in my car (well, not my car… because I'm like Ferris Bueller and still have to bum rides of people…) and I heard an interesting story on the radio news hour. My favourite news reader for Triple J, Elise Stratum, informed me that newdevelopments had beenmade on the death of famed artist, Vincent Van Gogh. This story piqued my interest. It was interesting to me that now, more than one hundred years after his death, new facts have been brought to the table. So, the question is; Did Van Gogh really kill himself?

A: Two Pulitzer Prizewinning authors of Van Gogh: The Life, who have researched the subject for decades, claim that Van Gogh did not actually kill himself. Instead, the impressionist painter was shot accidentally by teenage brothers with a malfunctioning gun at a farm in Auvers-sur-Oise in France.One of the authors, Steven Naifeh, says Van Gogh was grateful for his approaching death and decided to take the blame himself, protecting the teenagers and casting himself as a martyr.
The painter was widely known for cutting off part of his ear and being admitted into an asylum, due to his depression. His death in 1890 was caused by a gunshot wound to the chest which many believed was self inflicted. However,Co-author Gregory White Smith says letters written by the painter contain no hints he was considering suicide before his death.
The doctor who treated Van Gogh claimed that the trajectory of the bullet was at the strange angle, and the gun was held at a distance from the body, too far for Van Gogh to be holding it himself.The book says the fatal shot was probably fired by 16-year-old Rene Secretan, who had a history of pestering the artist, possibly in what the authors say could have been a "cowboy game" gone wrong. It was also unlikely that Van Gogh would have had access to a gun, as they were a rarity in rural France.
The Van Gogh Museum have not yet taken to this theory, stating that the evidence is still quite substantial. However, it does raise some interesting new perspectives on the infamous and un-appreciated artist.

A Google a day keeps the doctor away.

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