Image caption Van Gogh took his own life in 1890, two years after cutting off his ear 
 
 Vincent Van Gogh cut off his entire ear rather than just part of it, newly discovered drawings suggest. 
 
 The sketches were drawn by Dr Felix Rey, the physician who treated Van Gogh's wounds in 1888, and discovered in a Californian archive. 
 
 The drawings depict the artist's ear both before and after the self-inflicted injury, and show he sliced almost his entire ear off. 
 
 Previous claims suggested he had only cut off his earlobe or part of his ear. 
 
 Image copyright University of California Image caption Dr Rey's drawing was discovered in the University of California's Bancroft Library 
 
 The sketches were discovered by Bernadette Murphy among papers owned by Irving Stone, who had been in touch with Dr Rey in 1930. 
 
 Her research has also shed more light on "Rachel" - the woman who Van Gogh had handed his severed ear to with the words "keep this object carefully". 
 
 The findings suggests Rachel was not a prostitute, as had previously been thought, but a girl who worked as a maid in brothels as well as a cleaner in business premises. 
 
 Image copyright EPA Image caption Van Gogh painted a portrait of Dr Rey, which is part of the new exhibition 
 
 Murphy began investigating Van Gogh after visiting Arles, the artist's home in the 1880s. 
 
 Her findings will be published in a new book, Van Gogh's Ear: The True Story. 
 
 Coincidentally, a new exhibition which will focus on the artist's mental illness is due to open in the Netherlands this month. 
 
 On The Verge of Insanity, which will be housed at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, will feature the artist's portrait of Dr Rey. 
 
 The painter cut off his ear after suffering a mental breakdown. He was found alive by police the next day and taken to hospital. 
 
 Van Gogh took his own life in 1890. 

 Facebook Twitter Pinterest New Book, Van Gogh's Ear: The True Story, Reveals Previously Unpublished Evidence About Vincent Van Gogh and His Notorious Breakdown (CNW Group/Penguin Random House Canada Limited) Facebook Twitter Pinterest Diagram by Dr. Felix Rey, the attending physician, showing how and where Van Gogh cut off his ear. Credit: The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. (CNW Group/Penguin Random House Canada Limited) 
 
 × New Book, Van Gogh's Ear: The True Story, Reveals Previously Unpublished Evidence About Vincent Van Gogh and His Notorious Breakdown (CNW Group/Penguin Random House Canada Limited) 
 
 Diagram by Dr. Felix Rey, the attending physician, showing how and where Van Gogh cut off his ear. Credit: The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. (CNW Group/Penguin Random House Canada Limited) 
 
 
 
 
 
 TORONTO, July 12, 2016 /CNW/ - On December 23, 1888, Vincent van Gogh looked in the mirror, picked up a blade and sliced into his ear, a violent act that has come to define him. But exactly how much he cut off has never been clear, and scholars have long maintained that Vincent only took off the lobe. 
 
 Now Bernadette Murphy, author of a new book, Van Gogh's Ear (published today July 12, 2016) uncovers definitive evidence about his infamous act of self-harm and, for the first time, identifies the woman to whom he presented his grisly package. 
 
 Previously unpublished and now revealed worldwide for the first time in Van Gogh's Ear, is a diagram Murphy discovered in an archive in California, drawn by Dr. Felix Rey, the doctor how treated Van Gogh the day after his breakdown, showing exactly the damage Vincent inflicted on himself. 
 
 Murphy also debunks the "Rachel" myth for the first time – the young woman to whom Van Gogh gave his severed ear. Long presumed to be a prostitute, Murphy has discovered that "Rachel" was in fact Gabrielle, a maid in the red-light district of Arles and working at the brothel Vincent went to that night, leading her to posit new theories about why he gave her this gift. 
 
 After seven years of meticulous research, Murphy has reconstructed Van Gogh's time in Arles, France, and casts new light not only on why he committed such a brutal act but also on how we view him, his art and his madness. 
 
 "This investigation has been an incredible adventure and discovering the document was an extraordinary moment. From my little house in Provence I couldn't believe I had found something new and important about Vincent Van Gogh, but it was a vital detail in my complete re-examination of this most famous of artists, the key people he met in Arles and his tragic end." 
 
 -- Bernadette Murphy 
 
 Bernadette Murphy is an indefatigable researcher and compelling storyteller. She casts dramatic new light on one of history's most famous episodes of self-harm, neatly and convincingly skewering many long-held myths and forcing us to reappraise what we know of Van Gogh's life." 
 
 -- Ross King, author of Leonardo and the Last Supper 
 
 BERNADETTE MURPHY was born and raised in the UK. She has lived most of her adult life in the south of France, and worked in many different fields. A series of chance events led her to start investigating the life of Van Gogh in Arles. Van Gogh's Ear is her first book. She worked closely with Jeremy Paxman on a BBC documentary of the same title, which will air on PBS this fall. 
 
 NOTES TO EDITORS: 
 
 Van Gogh's Ear: The True Story by Bernadette Murphy is published July 12, 2016 by Random House Canada and simultaneously in US, UK, Germany and Netherlands. It is the first publication of the document drawn by Dr. Felix Rey. 
 
 The diagram was drawn for the writer Irving Stone when he visited Dr. Rey in Arles in 1930, whilst researching his fictionalized biography of Van Gogh, Lust for Life (1934). It is now held by the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkley. 
 
 The document was first revealed to the public by Bernadette Murphy at a press conference at the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, on July 12, 2016. 
 
 SOURCE Penguin Random House Canada Limited 
 
 Image with caption: "New Book, Van Gogh's Ear: The True Story, Reveals Previously Unpublished Evidence About Vincent Van Gogh and His Notorious Breakdown (CNW Group/Penguin Random House Canada Limited)". Image available at: http://photos.newswire.ca/images/download/20160712_C1150_PHOTO_EN_732030.jpg 
 
 Image with caption: "Diagram by Dr. Felix Rey, the attending physician, showing how and where Van Gogh cut off his ear. Credit: The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. (CNW Group/Penguin Random House Canada Limited)". Image available at: http://photos.newswire.ca/images/download/20160712_C1150_PHOTO_EN_732032.jpg 
 
 
 
 
 
 For further information: Sheila Kay, skay@penguinrandomouse.com, 416 957 1570 

 An Irish-born amateur historian appears to have solved one of the great mysteries of Western art, namely how much of his left ear did Vincent van Gogh slice off late on the evening of Dec. 23, 1888. 
 
 The answer is, pretty much the entire ear. Until now, the scholarly consensus has been that van Gogh, 35 at the time, severed only his left earlobe, which he then washed, wrapped in newspaper and took as a gift to a prostitute in the southeastern French city of Arles, his home since February, 1888. 
 
 However, a search of the archives of writer Irving Stone (1903-1989), whose best-selling 1934 biographical novel Lust for Life did so much to both stoke and fix the public’s image of van Gogh as the suicidal genius/madman recognized only in death, has uncovered a detailed, annotated illustration by the internist who tended the legendary painter’s wound on Christmas Eve day, 1888. 
 
 The search was undertaken in 2010 at the Stone archives at the University of California, Berkeley, at the behest of historian Bernadette Murphy. She includes the first-ever reproduction of the diagram in her book Van Gogh’s Ear, published Tuesday, under what has been until now great secrecy, in the United States, Canada, England, Germany and the Netherlands. 
 
 Murphy also presented her findings on Tuesday morning at a media conference at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which is about to host a nine-week exhibition titled On the Verge of Insanity: Van Gogh and His Illness. 
 
 In the course of her decade-long research into van Gogh’s life and death, Murphy discovered that Stone, while working up what became Lust for Life, had actually visited Arles in August, 1930, and met with van Gogh’s physician, Félix Rey. At some point in their conversation, Stone asked the 65-year-old Rey if he would kindly draw an illustration of van Gogh’s injury. The doctor tore off a page from his prescription pad and proceeded to draw, in black ink, a picture of the artist’s ear before he attacked it with a cut-throat razor and a picture of it afterward. The top picture has a dotted line clearly showing the trajectory of the slice while the bottom reveals a tiny remnant of the lobe. 
 
 An illustration done by Dr. Félix Rey, who tended to van Gogh’s ear wound on Dec. 24, 1888 in Arles. 
 
 At the bottom of the page, Rey says he’s “happy to give [Stone] the information you have requested concerning my unfortunate friend. I sincerely hope that you won’t fail to glorify the genius of this remarkable painter, as he deserves.” (After van Gogh recovered from his injury, he “went to great lengths to hide the wound,” Murphy writes, “purchasing a hat immediately after leaving the hospital.”) 
 
 Murphy, who has never published a book until now, argues that van Gogh’s action, while certainly the work of a mentally and emotionally disturbed individual, was not “a completely random act of self-harm” but something at once “deliberate and conscious.” 
 
 Indeed, in her book, she claims to have discovered the identity of the woman to whom van Gogh gave his ear as “a personal, intimate gift,” which, she goes on to say, was “meant to alleviate what he perceived as her suffering.” 
 
 The traditional story of the gift has van Gogh, distraught over the imminent departure of painter Paul Gauguin from Arles after a failed attempt at creating a sort of artistic brotherhood there, taking the ear to a brothel, where he gives it to a prostitute named Rachel. “Keep this object carefully,” he tells her before fleeing into the night. 
 
 Murphy claims that Rachel was not a prostitute but rather a chambermaid in Arles’s red-light district, that her real name was Gabrielle and that as a child she had been seriously bitten by a dog. Van Gogh, Murphy says, saw the 19-year-old Gabrielle as “a wounded angel.” (Prostitution, Murphy notes, was legal in France until after the Second World War, but prostitutes had to be at least 20 years old.) Further, she says she has contacted Gabrielle’s living relatives, but, at their request, is keeping Gabrielle’s surname a secret “until I am given permission by the family.” 
 
 Another apparent coup for Murphy is her debunking of the long-circulating story that had dozens, even a hundred or so, of Arles residents signing a petition in late February, 1889, urging the mayor to return the recovering van Gogh to his family or, failing that, put him in an asylum. Murphy reproduces the petition, revealing that it has only 30 names in a city that had a population of 15,000 at the time. She also notes that at least four of the signatures are likely forgeries as the signatories were illiterate. Moreover, virtually all the signatories had close ties to Bernard Soulè, a real-estate agent who wanted to break van Gogh’s lease, and François Crévoulin, whose grocery store was adjacent to van Gogh’s home. 
 
 As of this writing, Murphy remains something of the mystery woman to van Gogh’s mystery man. Repeated requests to her publisher for additional biographical information were not answered. In Van Gogh’s Ear, only the skimpiest of details are provided. At one point, she writes: “I, too, am the outsider, and I have had to confront confusion, prejudice and presumption.” As for her van Gogh fascination, its wellsprings are explained very vaguely: “I had health problems. … I had plenty of time on my hands. … I have enjoyed unravelling puzzles.” 
 
 Doubtless this obscurity will become less obscure as both she and Van Gogh’s Ear make their rounds and the findings are debated and tested by the van Gogh establishment. 

 AMSTERDAM — Everyone knows that Vincent van Gogh cut off his left ear. But since that fateful event nearly 128 years ago, there has been continuing debate among scholars about the severity of that mutilation, which took place in Arles, France, in December 1888. Did he simply slice off a little chunk of his ear, or did he lop off the entire ear? 
 
 The author and amateur historian Bernadette Murphy, while researching the last period of that Dutch Post Impressionist’s life for a new book, discovered a document in an American archive that may help resolve the issue. A note written by Félix Rey, a doctor who treated van Gogh at the Arles hospital, contains a drawing of the mangled ear showing that the artist indeed cut off the whole thing. 
 
 The letter and drawing will be displayed for the first time at the Van Gogh Museum’s exhibition “On the Verge of Insanity,” which opens here on Friday and runs through Sept. 25, along with previously unexhibited documents and artifacts that try to provide more detailed evidence about van Gogh’s mental illness. 
 
 The exhibition will also include about 25 paintings and other objects, like a corroded revolver that van Gogh may have used to kill himself, museum officials say. These will try to explore, in particular, the final stretch of his life while his troubles escalated, from the ear-cutting incident to July 29, 1890, when he apparently committed suicide in Auvers-sur-Oise, France.
– An amateur historian says a secret detail about Vincent van Gogh has for decades sat in the archives of the writer who tackled the artist's life in the acclaimed 1934 fictionalized biography Lust for Life. In what a press release describes as "seven years of meticulous research," Bernadette Murphy uncovered a 1930 meeting between author Irving Stone and van Gogh's physician, Felix Rey. During their visit, Rey sketched an illustration of the injury van Gogh inflicted on his left ear on Dec. 23, 1888, a wound that Rey treated a day later after police found van Gogh and brought him to the hospital, reports the BBC. The Globe and Mail reports "scholarly consensus" has long held that van Gogh sliced off his earlobe and later gifted it to a prostitute named Rachel. Quite the opposite, holds Murphy. Murphy's suspicion that the sketch remained in Stone's archive proved correct, and it shows the ear was nearly entirely severed, with only a bit of lobe remaining. In comments to the New York Times, van Gogh biographer Steven Naifeh describes the sketch as "not credible," saying his own research surfaced a "very detailed etching" of van Gogh's ear made in 1890 by another doctor; though more than the lobe was missing, the entire ear was not gone. A reproduction of the Rey sketch, done on a prescription pad, is featured in Murphy's book, Van Gogh's Ear, which was published Tuesday. Her book upends the long-held Rachel story as well, with Murphy saying her research led her to a 19-year-old brothel maid named Gabrielle who had suffered a serious dog bite as a child and who was given the ear to "alleviate what [van Gogh] perceived as her suffering." (Another van Gogh surprise: a newly found sketchbook.)