This undated recent photo provided Wednesday June 19, 2019 by Drouot auction house shows the revolver believed to have been used by Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh to take his own life. The revolver has been sold at auction. An individual buyer whose name was not released bought the 7mm pocket revolver 130,000 euros plus taxes at an auction Wednesday, June 19, 2019 in Paris. (Stephane Briolant/Drouot via AP)
PARIS (AP) — A revolver believed used by Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh to kill himself has sold for about $146,000 at an auction in Paris.
An individual buyer whose name was not released bought the 7mm pocket revolver for 130,000 euros plus taxes on Wednesday.
The weapon was discovered in the 1960s in fields in the northern French village of Auvers-sur-Oise. Van Gogh is widely believed to have shot himself in the chest there in 1890.
The family of former owners of the inn where the painter died two days later 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.
Van Gogh’s suicide was questioned in a book by Pulitzer Prize-winning authors who concluded he was fatally shot by two teenagers.