Van Gogh gun: Revolver the painter is thought to have shot himself with set to be sold at auction

Gun that killed Van Gogh to be sold at auction in Paris on June 19 - Copyright AuctionArt/Drouot

Published on 03/04/2019 - 16:04•Updated 19/06/2019 - 19:24

Dubbed “the most famous weapon in art history”, the Lefaucheux revolver is estimated to be worth between €40,000 and €60,000.

The gun that painter Vincent Van Gogh is thought to have fatally wounded himself with is to go under the hammer in Paris later this year.

Dubbed “the most famous weapon in art history”, the Lefaucheux revolver is estimated to be worth between €40,000 and €60,000 by AuctionArt.

The seven-millimetre-calibre gun was found by a farmer in 1965 in a field near Auvers-sur-Oise, north-west of Paris, where Van Gogh spent the last months of his life in 1890.

The revolver was presented to the public in 2012 for the first time. It was also on show at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam in 2016.

The mystery of the Dutch painter’s death is still unclear: while historians believed Van Gogh killed himself, some researchers claim he might have been accidentally shot by two boys.

The auction is scheduled for June 19, 2019, at Hôtel Drouot