Van Gogh ‘shot by two teens’

EXPERTS at Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum remain unconvinced by a new book that claims the 19th century Dutch artist was accidentally shot by two teenagers and did not die from self-inflicted wounds.

The biography published this week of Vincent Van Gogh by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith says the artist, who suffered chronic depression, claimed to have shot himself to protect the boys, and that “he was covering up his own murder”.

He died two days later.

Leo Jansen, the museum curator and editor of Van Gogh’s letters, said the biography, Van Gogh, A Life, is a “great book”, but experts “cannot yet agree” with the authors’ conclusions about the painter’s death. He said the book revives enough unanswered questions to warrant another look.