Tight springs, Magazine sometimes hangs and the emissions bar is loose. Lefaucheux types of this calibre have the dubious honour of both the death of Vincent van Gogh as of Arthur Rimbaud on their conscience. It concerns a six shot version in 7mm black powder with octagonal barrel. That did not exclude, the auction house added, that the gun could not also have been hidden or abandoned by the two young brothers in the field. Pinfire revolver type Lefaucheux, made in Liege in the 2nd half of the 19th century (ca. "All these clues give credence to the theory that this is the weapon used in the suicide." "Technical tests on the weapon have shown the weapon was used and indicate that it stayed in the ground for a period that would coincide with 1890," it said. In the film the gun goes off after the two young boys, who were brothers, got into a struggle with the bohemian stranger.Īuction Art said that the farmer who found the gun in 1965 gave it to the owners of the inn at Auvers-sur-Oise, whose family are now selling it. The bullet Dr Gachet extracted from Van Gogh's chest was the same calibre as the one used by the Lefaucheux revolver. It set a world record when it sold for $82.5 million in 1990. He said Van Gogh painted some of his best work in his final days, including his "Portrait of Dr Gachet", the local doctor who later tried to save his life. "Do I believe that Van Gogh killed himself? Absolutely not!" he declared when the film was premiered at the Venice film festival in September. The legendary French screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere - who co-wrote the script with Schnabel - insisted that there "is absolutely no proof he killed himself. Its director, the renowned American painter Julian Schnabel, told AFP that Van Gogh had painted 75 canvasses in his 80 days at Auvers-sur-Oise and was unlikely to be suicidal. That theory got fresh support from a new biopic of the artist starring Willem Dafoe, "At Eternity's Gate". While most art historians agree that Van Gogh killed himself, that assumption has been questioned in recent years, with some researchers claiming that the fatal shot may have been fired accidentally by two local boys playing with the weapon in the field. Two years earlier in 1888, he cut off his ear before offering it to a woman in a brothel in Arles in the south of France. A private collector bought the gun, billed as the the most famous weapon in the history of art, with a telephone bid, Art Auction told AFP. It was not his first dramatic act of self-harm. The revolver with which Vincent van Gogh is believed to have shot himself sold for 162,500 euros (182,000) at a Paris auction on Wednesday nearly three times the estimate. He died 36 hours later after staggering wounded back to the inn in the dark. The Dutch artist had borrowed the gun from the owner of the inn where he was staying. Van Gogh experts believe that he shot himself with the revolver near the village of Auvers-sur-Oise north of Paris, where he spent the last few months of his life in 1890.