Conclusion

And so having explored van Gogh’s struggle with alcohol and solitude, we may return to Toulouse-Lautrec’s Portrait of Vincent Van Gogh and look at the Dutch painter’s alcoholism with refreshed eyes. No longer are we deluded by the image of a heavy drinker indulging himself in alcohol, nor will we interpret his obsession with drinking merely as a result of his capitulation to chemical abuse. Instead, we find in the portrait a victim of solitude who, without company, could only turn to alcohol to soothe his lonesomeness. Perhaps his dependence on alcohol did turn into a physical addiction towards the end of his life, as Arnold and Conrad suggested, but the initial cause would be his increasingly agonizing fear of solitude. Therefore, instead of reading his life with the voyeuristic amusement of reading the story of a psychotic, we are ready to sympathize with him as a sufferer. Through the Portrait of Vincent Van Gogh, Lautrec was perhaps expressing his sympathy by capturing the poignant moment of his lonely friend. Indeed, van Gogh’s reliance on alcohol to pacify his loneliness came at a great cost. When the aggravating pain of loneliness finally defeated his determination to remain sober and ensnared him back into alcoholism, it lead him down a spiral of frailty, delusion and depression in Arles, with which he suffered fits of violence, cut off his ear lobe as well as attacked Gauguin. Ironically, as his alcoholism deteriorated, drinking could no long sparkle conviviality but only worsened his lonesomeness. One month before he committed suicide, he remorsefully wrote to his parents, ‘For me, life may well continue in solitude’ (van Gogh 3:282). From his words, we can see that even though he continued to drink, alcohol could no long dismiss his solitude, except perhaps, to provide him some evanescent delusion when he was inebriated. Eventually he descended into a state of abysmal despair and shot himself, creating a tragic end to his life. In short, van Gogh paid dearly for soothing his solitude by alcohol, exchanging the ephemeral consolation with a corroded body and a tortured soul.

Image: De Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri. Portrait of Vincent van Gogh. 1887. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Holland.