Vincent van Gogh 'suicide gun' sells at auction in Paris for £144k

A gun believed to have been used by Vincent van Gogh to kill himself has sold for €162,500 (£144,000) at an auction in Paris.

A private buyer whose name was not released bought the heavily rusted revolver for almost three times more than expected on Wednesday, AFP reports.

Experts at auction house Drouot had priced the revolver between €40,000 and €60,000.

The weapon was discovered in the 1960s in fields in the northern French village of Auvers-sur-Oise, where the Dutch painter spent his final days.

Van Gogh is widely believed to have shot himself in the chest there in 1890.

The artist suffered bouts of psychosis and deep depression throughout his life, with his torment often infusing his art, whether intensely painted self portraits or other notable works including The Starry Night and Sunflowers.

He is also notorious for having chopped off part of his own left ear with a razor blade during an argument with fellow artist Paul Gauguin.

The painter died at Auvers-sur-Oise near Paris in July 1890, aged just 37, more than two days after shooting himself in the chest.

After failing to kill himself instantly, Van Gogh stumbled back to the inn where he was staying and was looked after by the innkeeper, Arthur Ravoux, and his daughter Adeline, who was 13 at the time and recounted the events more than 60 years later.

"I have tried to kill myself," Van Gogh is reputed to have told Ravoux. The artist had spent more than two months at the inn, producing a whirlwind of some 80 paintings in what would be his final, distraught flurry of creativity.

Searches for the gun began the day after he died but the likely weapon was not found until the 1960s, in the same field, with the correct calibre and showing indications that it had been fired.

It was discovered by a farmer and ended up in the possession of a woman whose child was the seller.

The family decided to sell the revolver after it was featured in a 2016 exhibit at Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum that charted his descent into mental illness.

"It is a very emblematic piece," said auctioneer Gregoire Veyres. "The fact that it's a gun, it's an object of death. And if Van Gogh is Van Gogh, it's because of his suicide and this gun is part of it."

Exhaustive efforts to confirm the gun's link to Van Gogh, including tests that established it had been buried for 50 to 80 years, led to a 2012 book.

A similar Lefaucheux revolver used by Paul Verlaine to try to kill his lover and fellow poet Arthur Rimbaud in 1873 was sold at auction in Paris in 2016, fetching 434,500 euros.

Agencies contributed to this report.