Hidden gems

By EITHNE SHORTALL

Mull over van Gogh mystery

ART HISTORIANS have spent years trying to determine why Vincent van Gogh chopped off his ear. Last year it was claimed that his friend and fellow post-impressionist painter Paul Gauguin cut it off during a wine-fuelled argument. Last month another historian said it was because his brother, Theo, had got engaged and the artist feared he would lose his only constant human support.

But what is just as big a mystery as the self-mutilation is why the home of van Gogh's first one-earred self-portrait is not as well known as the events that led to the work. There have been numerous reproductions of Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear,but very few people have seen the real thing.

Yet there it hangs, at the Courtauld Gallery, near Covent Garden in London, as part of arguably the finest impressionist and post-impressionist collection outside Paris.

Between 1923 and 1929 Samuel Courtauld put together one of the world's most distinguished collections of late 19th- and early 20th-century French art. Among his acquisitions were such masterpieces as Paul Cézanne's Man with a Pipe, Gauguin's Nevermoreand Édouard Manet's A Bar at the Folies-Bergère.

And if the art isn't enough of a draw, the hidden-gem status of this gallery comes with the benefit of little if any queuing. So while other tourists are waiting in line at Tate Modern or straining their necks to catch a glimpse of Botticelli's Venus and Marsat the National Gallery, enjoy some alone time mulling over why it is that the bandage is painted on his right ear when it wasthe left one that van Gogh chopped off.

The Courtauld Gallery, Somerset House, 150 Strand, London, courtauld.ac.uk

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