Van Gogh once cut off an ear for his muse one night when his good friend Gauguin was out walking alone. According to Gauguin's memoirs, written in 1903, he had almost walked across the large square in front of their house when he suddenly heard the familiar sound of thin, rapid footsteps coming from behind. He had just turned around when he saw Van Gogh with an open razor in his hand, trying to throw it at him. Perhaps Gauguin's majestic gaze stopped Van Gogh, he did not dare to commit murder, stood still and froze, then drooped his head and went home. That night, Gauguin was afraid to go home and stayed at the hotel. When he returned to the studio the next day, he saw a lot of people there, and then he realized that Van Gogh cut off his own ear, and put his own ear washed in an envelope, and gave it to the woman of the month, Rachel, and asked her to "keep it well".
Van Gogh was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, and Gauguin called Theo to tell him, then returned to Paris and hid at a friend's house. He never saw Van Gogh again. However, Hans Kaufmann, a scholar at the University of Hamburg in Germany, has a different view of Van Gogh's "ear cutting": in order to compete for the woman of the month, Rachel, the two of them got into a fight outside the door, and Gauguin wielded a sword and swung it at Van Gogh, chopping off his ear in the fight. However, Kaufmann said he was unsure whether Gauguin did it on purpose or by accident. Van Gogh was in bed recuperating from his injuries at the time, did not provide any information to the police, and committed suicide seven months later. If the truth is revealed, Gauguin will go to jail. In addition, the dagger or razor Van Gogh said he used to cut off his own ear was never found. It is also said that Rachel was not a woman of the month, but the daughter of a local farmer who worked there as a servant.
The story of Van Gogh and his muse is not a happy one, compared to Monet, who was much more romantic, and whose muse was his wife, Camille, because all his life he painted nothing but lotus flowers and Camille.
The difficult days, Monet never tired of painting Camille, and then Camille unfortunately died in her prime, Monet put aside the pen and obsessed with nature without characters, although Monet's paintings have appeared after his wife Alice and his daughters, but the figure of the face is very fuzzy, it seems to give the feeling that the fluttering is still Camille's silhouette, Monet in his later years, has been tirelessly painting the Water lilies, quiet illusory and poignant, in fact, this is not the incarnation of Camille. A woman's pride does not lie in the number of adorers, but in whether there is a man all his life for her weak water, but only to take her a dipper, Camille is undoubtedly enviable.
"Girl with a pearl earring" is the masterpiece of the Dutch Golden Age giants Vermeer, is a small oil painting, than the octavo not much, the oil has been dry and cracked, but this is such a seemingly insignificant painting, but it makes many literati, tourists visitors in the painting in front of the desire to go can not be, what is shocking their minds? It is the main character in the painting, a young girl wearing pearl earrings, because she is precisely Vermeer's muse Greta.
The young girl Greta is the painter's daughter, due to her father's blindness and the family's decline, food, her mother had to let her carry a simple baggage, to the rich man's house to help the maid. So Greta arrives at the house of the painter Vermeer. In this seemingly rich family, Vermeer, his wife, mother-in-law and six children live a stable and decent life. But in fact, this is just a facade of prosperity. Vermeer's pregnant wife, who is jealous, has no understanding of her husband's art and won't even set foot in his studio, while his mother-in-law, who is in charge of the household, is strict and difficult. In this matriarchal family, Vermeer was an outsider who didn't fit in. Yet the family's entire livelihood depended on his work, and Vermeer, in the prime of his creative life, was forced to submit to the whims of a patron and paint popular works. This is so that the mother-in-law can continue to strut around the house, and the wife can have children one after another.
Greta begins to work day and night, but is constantly scolded, and even the children can bully her at any time. Greta endures everything in silence until one day she enters Vermeer's world of oil colors. She carefully cleaned his studio every day; gazing quietly, fondly and intently at each of his works. She goes to great lengths to mix Vermeer's paints in the wee hours of the morning in order to avoid the suspicions of her acerbic mistress.
Over time, Greta becomes fascinated by Vermeer's work, and Vermeer discovers that Greta possesses a great artistic talent, and that Greta understands what his paintings are trying to convey, rather than being ignorant of art, as his wife was. Greta began to assist Vermeer with his paintings, giving him advice and inspiring many of Vermeer's creations. Slowly, the relationship between the two changed subtly. Vermeer's relationship with his wife has been strained in the past due to cheating on her. His wife's increasingly hysterical and suspicious state makes him cautious and repressed, not daring to cross the line. His attitude towards Greta is the same, stoic, fearful of resistance, and at a loss for words, so much so that he finally chooses to remain silent. At the request of his patron, Vermeer is finally able to paint Greta with honor. Greta, knowing that she will never have the chance to get really close to this man she loves, agrees.