遗作《树根》揭秘梵高生命中最后的日子
A Clue to van Gogh’s Final Days Is Found in His Last Painting
NINA SIEGAL
2020年9月24日
AMSTERDAM — One hundred and thirty years ago, Vincent van Gogh awoke in his room at an inn in Auvers-sur-Oise, France, and went out, as he usually did, with a canvas to paint. That night, he returned to the inn with a fatal gunshot wound. He died two days later, on July 29, 1890.
阿姆斯特丹——130年前，文森特·梵高(Vincent van Gogh)在法国瓦兹河畔奥维尔小镇一个客栈的房间醒来，然后像往常一样带着画板出了门。那天晚上，他带着致命的枪伤回到客栈。他于两天后，也就是1890年7月29日去世。
Scholars have long speculated about the sequence of events on the day of the shooting, and now Wouter van der Veen, a researcher in France, says he has discovered a large piece of the puzzle: the precise location where van Gogh created his final painting, “Tree Roots.” The finding could help to better understand how the artist spent his final day of work.
长久以来，学者们一直猜想着枪击当天的一系列事件，现在法国研究者伍特尔·范·德·维恩(Wouter van der Veen)表示，他发现了拼图中的一大块——梵高创作的最后一幅画《树根》(Tree Roots)的确切地点。这一发现有助于了解这位艺术家如何度过了最后一个工作日。
“We now know what he was doing during his last day” before he was shot, said Mr. van der Veen, the scientific director of the Van Gogh Institute, a nonprofit established to preserve the artist’s tiny room at the Auberge Ravoux, the inn in Auvers-sur-Oise. “We know that he spent all day painting this painting,” Mr. van der Veen noted.
对于梵高在中枪前“那一天都做了什么，我们现在知道了”，范·德·维恩说。他是梵高研究所(Van Goh Institute)的科学主管，该组织为保存艺术家在奥维尔小镇拉乌客栈的小房间而设。“我们知道他一整天都在画这幅画。”范·德·维恩指出。
“Tree Roots” was painted on the Rue Daubigny, a main road through Auvers-sur-Oise, which is about 20 miles north of Paris, Mr. van der Veen found. The tangled, gnarled tree roots and stumps can still be seen in the slope of a hill there today, just 500 feet from the Auberge Ravoux, where van Gogh spent the last 70 days of his life.
范·德·维恩发现，《树根》的创作地点在杜比尼大街，这是一条穿过奥维尔的主要街道，在巴黎以北约20英里处。那些交缠盘错的粗糙树根和树桩，如今仍可以在一个山坡上看到，距梵高度过生命中最后70天的拉乌客栈仅500英尺。
Researchers at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam have endorsed the finding. On Tuesday, the director of the museum, Emilie Gordenker, attended an unveiling of the spot.
阿姆斯特丹梵高博物馆(Van Gogh Museum)的研究人员肯定了这一发现。周二，博物馆总监埃米利‧戈登克(Emilie Gordenker)参加了揭晓该地点的活动。
Louis van Tilborgh, a senior researcher at the Van Gogh Museum, said in an interview that the finding was “an interpretation, but it looks like indeed it is true.”
梵高博物馆的高级研究员路易斯·范·蒂伯格(Louis van Tilborgh)在采访中说该发现是“一种解读，但看起来似乎确实是真的”。
Mr. van der Veen said that he was pointed toward the discovery while looking at images of Auvers from about 1905, which he had borrowed from Janine Demuriez, a 94-year-old Frenchwoman who has collected hundreds of historical postcards. One shows a cyclist on the Rue Daubigny, stopping next to a steep embankment, where tree roots are clearly visible.
范·德·维恩说，他在查看奥维尔1905年以来的一些图片时被引向这一发现。他从94岁的法国女士珍妮·德穆里埃斯(Janine Demuriez)那里借来这些图片，她收藏了数百张历史明信片。有一张照片显示了一个推自行车的人站在杜比尼大街上，身旁是一个陡峭的路堤，路堤上的树根清晰可见。
Mr. van der Veen said that he just happened to have the postcard on his screen at home in Strasbourg, France, during lockdown when something clicked in his mind: The postcard was reminiscent of “Tree Roots.” He pulled up a digital version of the painting, and compared them side by side.
范·德·维恩说，疫情期间，他在法国斯特拉斯堡的家中，电脑屏幕上显示着这张明信片，突然他灵机一动：这张明信片让人想起《树根》。他调出这张画的电子版，与明信片放在一起对照。
The postcard is “not a secret hidden document that nobody can find,” Mr. van der Veen said. “A lot of people have already seen it, and recognize the subject, the motif of tree roots. It was hidden in plain sight.”
范·德·维恩说，这张明信片并不是“不为人知的秘密隐藏文件”，“很多人都看过，也看出它的主题是盘错的树根。它就藏在我们的眼皮底下。”
Because he was unable to travel from Strasbourg himself, Mr. van der Veen called Dominique-Charles Janssens, the owner of the Van Gogh Institute who was in Auvers, and asked him to take a look at the area.
因为自己无法离开斯特拉斯堡，范·德·维恩打电话给梵高研究所的所有者、身在奥维尔的多米尼克·查尔斯·詹森斯(Dominique-Charles Janssens)，请他到那里查看。
“I’d say 45 to 50 percent is still there,” Mr. Janssens said in a telephone interview, referring to the entanglement of roots. “They cut some of the trees down, and it was covered with ivy, but we took some of that down.”
“可以说百分之四十到五十还保留在那里。”詹森斯在电话采访中说，他是指树根盘错的部分，“有些树被砍了，上面还长着藤叶，但我们扯掉了一些藤叶。”
Van Gogh would have walked along the Rue Daubigny to get to the town’s church, which he painted for “The Church at Auvers” in June 1890, and to make his way to the sprawling wheat fields just outside of town, where he painted “Wheatfield With Crows” in July, Mr. van der Veen said.
范·德·维恩说，梵高会走过杜比尼大街去往镇上的教堂，1890年6月，他在那里画了《奥维尔教堂》(The Church at Auvers)；他也会走过这条街去往镇外绵延的麦田，7月，他在那里画了《麦田上的乌鸦》(Wheatfield With Crows)。
There has long been debate about which painting was van Gogh’s last work, because he tended not to date his paintings. Many people believe it was “Wheatfield With Crows,” because Vincente Minnelli’s 1956 biopic “Lust for Life” depicts van Gogh, played by Kirk Douglas, painting that work as he goes mad, just before killing himself.
对于梵高的最后一幅画是哪一幅，一直存有争论，因为他往往不标记画的日期。很多人认为是《麦田上的乌鸦》，因为在文森特·明尼利(Vincente Minnelli)1956年的传记片《梵高传》(Lust for Life)中，柯克·道格拉斯(Kirk Douglas)扮演的梵高在画那幅画时发了疯，随后便自杀了。
Andries Bonger, who wrote down some of the events surrounding Vincent’s death and was the brother-in-law of Theo van Gogh, Vincent’s brother, noted in a letter, “The morning before his death, he had painted a forest scene, full of sun and life.”
提奥·梵高(Theo van Gogh)的妻兄安德里斯·邦格(Andries Bonger)写下了一些与文森特的死有关的事件，他在一封信里说道，“他在死前的上午还画了一幅森林的景象，充满阳光和生命力。”
In 2012, the Van Gogh Museum published a paper by Mr. van Tilborgh and Bert Maes arguing that the letter referred to “Tree Roots,” an unfinished painting in the museum’s collection. That claim has now largely been accepted by scholars.
2012年，梵高博物馆发表了范·蒂伯格和伯特·梅斯(Bert Maes)的一篇论文，主张这封信中所说的是该博物馆的藏品、未完成的《树根》。这一主张现在基本为学者所接受。
Because of the way light is depicted on the roots, Mr. van der Veen says he believes that van Gogh was looking at his subject matter at the end of the afternoon, about 5 p.m. or 6 p.m. He says he thinks this means that van Gogh probably spent the entire day painting.
因为树根上光线的描画方式，范·德·维恩说，他相信梵高是在傍晚五六点钟观看绘画对象的。他说他认为这意味梵高可能一整天都在画画。
Mr. van der Veen added that the new evidence challenged a theory put forward in 2011 by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith in their biography, “Van Gogh: The Life.” They argued that van Gogh did not commit suicide, but may have gotten drunk and argued with two young boys, who then accidentally killed him, not far from the Auberge Ravoux. Mr. van der Veen’s research on “Tree Roots” will be published in a book in France on Tuesday, and will also be available in English in digital form.
范·德·维恩补充说，这一新的证据还挑战了史蒂文·奈菲(Steven Naifeh)和格里高利·怀特·史密斯(Gregory White Smith)2011年在传记《梵高传》(Van Gogh: The Life)中的说法。该书认为梵高没有自杀，而是可能在醉酒后与两个小年轻发生了口角，在拉乌客栈附近被他们失手杀死。范·德·维恩对于《树根》的研究周二将在法国出版，同时会发售英文电子版。
“Now that we know he was painting all day, there was even less time for that to happen,” Mr. van der Veen said.
“现在我们知道他一整天都在画画，发生那样的事件在时间上更立不住脚了。”范·德·维恩说。
Mr. Naifeh responded that it would be impossible to time-stamp a painting based on the angle of the light. “It’s not a photograph; it’s a painting,” he said in a telephone interview. “Van Gogh painted somewhat abstractly, and he was always introducing a lot of painterly inventions,” he added, so it would be hard to tell if he was painting light he saw with his own eyes or just creating it on the canvas.
奈菲对此回应说，以光线的角度来判断一幅画的创作时间是不可能的。“那不是张照片；那是一幅画，”他在电话采访中说，“梵高的画法比较抽象，而且他一直尝试很多绘画创新。”他补充说，因此很难判断他是在画自己眼中看到的光，还是在画板上进行自己的创造。
Mr. Naifeh said the discovery could even support his murder theory. “The fact that he went out and painted all day, not just an average painting but a very important painting, indicates that he may not have been depressed,” he said. “It was otherwise a productive normal day, and that runs counterintuitive to the idea that he might then go and kill himself.”
奈菲说，这一发现甚至可以支持他的谋杀理论。“他出门画了一整天画，而且不是一幅普通的画，是一幅重要作品，这样的事实说明他可能没有抑郁，”他说，“原本是高效而平常的一天，这与他随后可能去自杀的想法是背道而驰的。”
Mr. van der Veen agreed on one point. “It confirms everything that most witnesses at this time say, that his behavior was perfectly normal in the last days,” he said. “There was no sign that he was having a crisis.”
范·德·维恩对于其中一点表示同意。“这与目前大部分目击人的说法一致，也就是他在最后几天里的行为很正常，”他说，“没有任何正在经历危机的征兆。”
However, Mr. van der Veen maintains that van Gogh killed himself, which is also the official position of the Van Gogh Museum.
然而，范·德·维恩仍坚持认为梵高是自杀的，这也是梵高博物馆的官方立场。
Van Gogh had also made a drawing of tree roots when he lived in The Hague in 1882. He described the artwork to his brother Theo in a letter.
梵高在1882年住在海牙时也创作过一幅树根的画。他在信里向弟弟提奥描述了这一作品。
He wrote that he wanted the tree to “express something of life’s struggle,” seeing it as “Frantically and fervently rooting itself, as it were, in the earth, and yet being half torn up by the storm.”
他写道，他希望这棵树“表达某种生命的挣扎”，它在他眼里“这样疯狂而热烈地扎根于土地，却被暴风撕裂了一半。”
Mr. van der Veen said that “Tree Roots” expressed something similar.
范·德·维恩说，《树根》表达了类似的东西。
“Ending his life with this painting makes so much sense,” he said. “The painting illustrates the struggle of life, and a struggle with death. That’s what he leaves behind. It is a farewell note in colors.”
“以这幅画来结束自己的生命再合理不过，”他说，“这幅画描绘了生命的挣扎，还有与死亡的抗争。这就是他所留下的。这是用色彩写就的诀别。”
