On this day 29 July deaths of Robert Schumann – Vincent van Gogh – Cass Elliot – Luis Buñuel – David Niven

Posted on 29 JulamMon, 29 Jul 2024 00:54:00 -05002024-07-29T00:54:00-05:0012 2011 by MacGregor

#RIP #OTD in 1856 composer (Carnaval, Symphonic Studies, Kinderszenen, Kreisleriana, Fantasie in C), pianist, husband of Clara Wieck, Robert Schumann died from pneumonia in a sanatorium in Bonn, Germany at the age of 46. Alter Friedhof in Bonn with Clara

On this day in 1890, Dutch post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh died from complications of a self-inflicted gunshot to the chest in Auvers-sur-Oise, France at the age of 37.  Born Vincent Willem van Gogh on 30 March 1853 in Zundert, Netherlands.  Perhaps my favorite artist.  In my opinion, his work has had a far-reaching influence on art as a result of its vivid colors and emotional impact.  Between his move to Paris and his discovery of the French Impressionists and his stay in Arles (accompanied for awhile by Paul Gauguin) he developed his highly recognizable style.  Van Gogh never married.

Van Gogh suffered from psychotic episodes and delusions and though he worried about his mental stability, he often neglected his physical health, did not eat properly and drank heavily. His friendship with Gauguin ended after a confrontation with a razor when, in a rage, he severed part of his own left ear. He spent time in psychiatric hospitals, including a period at Saint-Rémy. After he discharged himself and moved to the Auberge Ravoux in Auvers-sur-Oise near Paris, he came under the care of the homeopathic doctor Paul Gachet.

Van Gogh was unsuccessful during his lifetime, and was considered a madman and a failure. He became famous after his suicide, and exists in the public imagination as the quintessential misunderstood genius. His reputation began to grow in the early 20th century as elements of his painting style came to be incorporated by the Fauves and German Expressionists.

A ceramic vase with sunflowers on a yellow surface against a bright yellow background.

Sunflowers (F.458), repetition of the 4th version (yellow background), August 1889. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

An expansive painting of a wheatfield, with a footpath going through the centre underneath dark and forbidding skies, through which a flock of black crows fly.

Wheatfield with Crows, 1890. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Head shot photo of the artist as a clean-shaven young man. He has thick, ill-kept, wavy hair, a high forehead, and deep-set eyes with a wary, watchful expression.
Van Gogh in 1873, when he worked at the Goupil & Cie gallery in The Hague
A view from a window of pale red rooftops. A bird flies in the blue sky; in the near distance there are fields and to the right, the town and other buildings can be seen. On the distant horizon are chimneys.

Rooftops, View from the Atelier The Hague, 1882, private collection

A group of five sit around a small wooden table with a large platter of food, while one person pours drinks from a kettle in a dark room with an overhead lantern.

The Potato Eaters, 1885. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

    • A drawing of an old man who sits on a chair with his head in his hands

      Worn Out, pencil on watercolour paper, 1882. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

    • An image of a large opened bible on a table top

      Still Life with Open Bible, Extinguished Candle and Novelalso Still Life with Bible, 1885. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

    • A skull smoking a cigarette

      Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette, 1885–86. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

  • A woman facing away working with a spade

    Peasant Woman Digging, or Woman with a Spade, Seen from Behind, 1885. Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto

Blue-hued pastel drawing of a man facing right, seated at a table with his hands and a glass on it. He is wearing a coat. There are windows in the background.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Portrait of Vincent van Gogh, 1887, pastel drawing, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

    • Le Moulin de Blute-Fin (1886) from the Le Moulin de la Galette and Montmartre series’. Bridgestone Museum of Art, Tokyo (F273)

    • A Japanese woman looks to the left in a Ukiyo-e style painting

      Courtesan (after Eisen), 1887. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

    • A bearded old man sits gazing directly at the viewer

      Portrait of Père Tanguy, 1887. Musée Rodin, Paris

    • Closeup of a tree branch and landscape in the background, in a Ukiyo-e style painting

      Flowering Plum Orchard (after Hiroshige), 1887. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

  • A glass and bottle on a café table

    Still Life with Glass of Absinthe and a Carafe, 1887. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

A large house under a blue sky

The Yellow House, 1888. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

    • A man sowing seeds in front of a giant sun going down near a large tree

      The Sower with Setting Sun, 1888. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

    • On the edge of the sea four boats on the water in the distance; closer, four boats are on the dry sand on the beach

      Fishing Boats on the Beach at Saintes-Maries, June 1888. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

    • A small room with paintings on the wall, two chairs, a single bed and a table

      Bedroom in Arles, 1888. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

  • A large building under a clear sky with a landscape in the background and two people in the near distance

    The Old Mill, 1888. Albright–Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York

A seated red-bearded man wearing a brown coat, facing to the left, with a paintbrush in his right hand, is painting a picture of large sunflowers.

Paul Gauguin, The Painter of Sunflowers: Portrait of Vincent van Gogh, 1888. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

    • A billiard table in the centre of a room of a café surrounded by tables. Patrons are seated at several tables, and a man dressed in white stands behind the billiard table.

      The Night Café, 1888. Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut

    • A vineyard with many people working picking fruit, while a very large and bright sun shines in the sky.

      The Red Vineyard, November 1888. Pushkin Museum, Moscow. Sold to Anna Boch, 1890

    • A single, simple, yellow, wooden and straw, armless, empty chair, with a pipe and tobacco on the seat, in an empty room with tiles on the floor.

      Van Gogh’s Chair, 1888. National Gallery, London

    • An armchair with a cushion seat; there are two books and a lit candle on the seat. A lit lamp is on the wall.

      Paul Gauguin’s Armchair, 1888. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

    • A portrait of Vincent van Gogh from the right; he is smoking a pipe, wearing a winter hat. His ear is bandaged and he has no beard.

      Self-portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe, 1889, private collection

    • A courtyard garden of a large building with tree and fountain.

      The Courtyard of the Hospital at Arles, 1889, Oskar Reinhart Collection “Am Römerholz”, Winterthur, Switzerland

    • A portrait of Vincent van Gogh from the right; he is wearing a winter hat, his ear is bandaged and he has no beard.

      Self-portrait with Bandaged Ear, 1889, Courtauld Institute of Art, London

  • A large room of a large building with hospital beds and several people gathered around a wood-burning stove; nuns and others are in the background.

    Ward in the Hospital in Arles, 1889, Oskar Reinhart Collection “Am Römerholz”, Winterthur, Switzerland

A landscape in which the starry night sky takes up two-thirds of the picture. In the left foreground a dark pointed cypress tree extends from the bottom to the top of the picture. To the left, village houses and a church with a tall steeple are clustered at the foot of a mountain range. The sky is deep blue. In the upper right is a yellow crescent moon surrounded by a halo of light. There are many bright stars large and small, each surrounded by swirling halos. Across the centre of the sky the Milky Way is represented as a double swirling vortex.

The Starry Night, June 1889. Museum of Modern Art, New York

    • In an indoor prison yard a large group of men walk in a circle, one behind the other. The face of the prisoner in the centre of the painting and looking toward the viewer looks like Van Gogh.

      The Round of the Prisoners (after Doré), 1890. Pushkin Museum, Moscow

    • A man is scattering seeds in a ploughed field. The figure is represented as small, and is set in the upper right and walking out of the picture. He carries a bag of seed over one shoulder. The ploughed soil is grey, and behind it rises a standing crop, and in the left distance, a farmhouse. In the centre of the horizon is a giant yellow rising sun with emanating yellow rays. A path leads into the picture, and birds are swooping down.

      The Sower, (after Jean-François Millet), 1888. Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo

    • Two women are digging in a snowy field, covered in white, houses off in the distance, while the sun rises.

      Two Peasant Women Digging in a Snow-Covered Field at Sunset, (after Jean-François Millet), 1890. Foundation E.G. Bührle Collection, Zurich, Switzerland

  • A painting of an old man who sits on a chair with his head in his hands.

    Sorrowing Old Man (‘At Eternity’s Gate’), 1890. Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo

White House at Night, 1890. Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, painted six weeks before the artist’s death

Tree Roots, July 1890, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

The Church at Auvers, 1890. Musée d’Orsay, Paris

A view of a dark starry night with bright stars shining over the River Rhone. Across the river distant buildings with bright lights shining are reflected into the dark waters of the Rhone.

Starry Night Over the Rhone, 1888. Musée d’Orsay, Paris

A squarish painting of green winding olive trees; with rolling blue hills in the background and white clouds in the blue sky above.

Olive Trees with the Alpilles in the Background, 1889. Museum of Modern Art, New York

A squarish painting of a closeup of two women with one holding an umbrella while the other woman holds flowers. Behind them is a young woman who is picking flowers in a large bed of wildflowers. They appear to be walking through a garden on a winding path at the edge of a river.

Memory of the Garden at Etten, 1888. Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

A well-dressed woman sits facing to her right (the viewer's left). She has two books on her lap, and is dressed in dark clothes vividly contrasted against a yellow background.

L’Arlésienne: Madame Ginoux with Books, November 1888. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
    • A closeup portrait of an elderly well-dressed woman sits facing to her left (the viewer's right). She has a pleasant smile and she is dressed in a dark top and she is wearing a hat, in front of a vivid green background.

      Portrait of Artist’s Mother, October 1888, Norton Simon Museum of Art, Pasadena, California

    • A closeup portrait of an intense young man well-dressed with suit and tie, facing to his right (the viewer's left), he has a moustache and goatee and he is standing in front of a starry sky in the background.

      Eugène Boch, (The Poet Against a Starry Sky), 1888, Musée d’Orsay, Paris

    • A portrait of a middle aged man with a moustache and beard seated on a chair facing to his left (the viewer's right). He has a thoughtful look on his face and his hands are free while his left arm rests on a table, he is wearing a dark blue uniform and cap, in front of a pale blue background.

      Portrait of the Postman Joseph Roulin (1841–1903) early August 1888, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

  • An elderly well-dressed woman sits facing to her right (the viewer's left). She has her hands clasped together on her lap, and she is dressed in a dark top and green dress in front of a vivid flower wallpaper background.

    La Berceuse (Augustine Roulin)1889, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

A portrait of Vincent van Gogh from the left, with an extreme intense, intent look, and a red beard.

Self-Portrait, September 1889. Musée d’Orsay, Paris

    • A portrait of Vincent van Gogh from the left, with a relaxed but intent look, a red beard and wearing a grey hat.

      Self-Portrait with Grey Felt Hat, Winter 1887–88. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

    • A portrait of Vincent van Gogh from the left, with a relaxed look, a red beard and wearing a straw hat.

      Self-Portrait with Straw Hat, Paris, Winter 1887–88. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

    • A portrait of Vincent van Gogh from the left (good ear) holding a palette with brushes. He is wearing a blue cloak and has yellow hair and beard. The background is a deep violet.

      Self-Portrait, 1889. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. His Saint-Rémy self-portraits show his side with the unmutilated ear, as he saw himself in the mirror

  • A portrait of Vincent van Gogh from the left (good ear), with no beard.

    Self-Portrait Without Beard, c. September 1889. This painting may have been Van Gogh’s last self-portrait. He gave it to his mother as a birthday gift.

A ceramic vase with sunflowers on a yellow surface against a bright yellow background.

Still Life: Vase with Fourteen Sunflowers, August 1888. National Gallery, London

    • A ceramic vase with sunflowers on a yellow surface against a pale blue background.

      Still Life: Vase with Twelve Sunflowers, August 1888. Neue Pinakothek, Munich

    • Irises growing in a garden. There is bare soil visible and orange flowers in the background.

      Irises, 1889. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

    • Pale pink blossoms on the branches of a tree against a pale blue sky.

      Almond Blossom, 1890. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

    • Iris flowers and some green leaves in a yellow vase.

      Still Life: Vase with Irises Against a Yellow Background, May 1890, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

  • Pale pink roses in a green vase, against a pale green background.

    Still Life: Pink Roses in a Vase, May 1890, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

A painting of a large cypress tree, on the side of a road, with two people walking, a wagon and horse behind them, and a green house in the background, under an intense starry sky.

Road with Cypress and Star, May 1890, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo

    • A drawing of a landscape in which the starry night sky takes up two-thirds of the picture. In the left foreground a cypress tree extends from the bottom to the top of the picture. To the left, village houses and a church with a tall steeple are clustered at the foot of a mountain range. In the upper right is a crescent moon surrounded by a halo of light. There are many bright stars large and small, each surrounded by swirling halos. Across the centre of the sky the Milky Way is represented as a double swirling vortex

      Cypresses in Starry Night, a reed pen drawing executed by Van Gogh after the painting in 1889

    • A painting of a large group of cypress trees, beside which two young women are walking, a large house in the background, under a cloudy blue sky.

      Cypresses and Two Women, 1890. Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

    • A painting of two large cypress trees under a bright afternoon sky, next to a wheat field in a landscape of hills, bushes, flowers and trees

      Wheat Field with Cypresses, 1889. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

  • A painting of two large cypress trees, under a late afternoon sky, with a crescent moon

    Cypresses, 1889. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

A watercolour of two pink peach trees in a blossoming orchard of trees near a wooden fence under a bright blue sky.

Pink Peach Tree in Blossom (Reminiscence of Mauve), watercolour, March 1888. Kröller-Müller Museum

    • A painting of a blossoming orchard of trees under a bright blue sky.

      The Pink Orchard also Orchard with Blossoming Apricot Trees, March 1888. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

    • A painting of a blossoming orchard of many trees near wooden fences bordered by large cypress trees under a bright blue sky.

      Orchard in Blossom, Bordered by Cypresses, April 1888. Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

  • A close view of three blossoming trees behind which can be seen a large orchard and field in which a man is working, a village filled with buildings and houses in the background, under a bright sky

    View of Arles, Flowering Orchards, 1889. Neue Pinakothek, Munich

An expansive painting of a wheatfield, with green hills through the centre underneath dark and forbidding skies.

Wheatfield Under Thunderclouds, 1890, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands

    • A bright squarish painting of a wheatfield, a river, houses, mountains and the rising sun.

      Enclosed Wheat Field with Rising Sun, May 1889, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

    • A squarish painting of a wheatfield in a dense pouring rain.

      Rain or Enclosed Wheat Field in the Rain, November 1889, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia

    • A squarish painting of a darkened wheatfield of stacks, with a river and mountains in the background under a rising full moon.

      Wheat Fields, early June 1889. Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo

  • A squarish painting of a wheatfield, in the afternoon, with landscape and a white house in the background.

    Wheat Field at Auvers with White House, June 1890, The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C.

A man wearing a straw hat, carrying a canvas and paintbox, walking to the left, down a tree-lined, leaf-strewn country road

Painter on the Road to Tarascon, August 1888 (destroyed by fire in the Second World War)

The Final Footprint – Van Gogh is interred in Auvers-sur-Oise Town Cemetery.  His brother Theo apparently reported that van Gogh’s last words were, “The sadness will last forever.”  Theo would die six months later.  The brothers rest side-by-side. the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which holds the world’s largest collection of his paintings and drawings.

On this day in 1974, singer and actress Mama Cass, Cass Elliot died of heart failure in Harry Nilsson’s flat in Mayfair, London at the age of 32. Born Ellen Naomi Cohen on September 19, 1941 in . Perhaps best known for having been a member of the Mamas and the Papas. After the group broke up, she released five solo albums. In 1998, she was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for her work with the Mamas and the Papas.

Elliot was married twice, the first time in 1963 to James Hendricks, her group mate in the Big 3 and the Mugwumps. This was reportedly a platonic arrangement to assist him in avoiding being drafted during the Vietnam War. The marriage reportedly was never consummated and was annulled in 1968. In 1971, Elliot married journalist Donald von Wiedenman, heir to a Bavarian barony. Their marriage ended in divorce after a few months.

The Final Footprint

The flat where Elliot died, Flat 12, 9 Curzon Place (later Curzon Square), Shepherd Market, Mayfair, London, was on loan from Nilsson. Four years later, The Who’s drummer Keith Moon died in the same room, also aged 32 years.

Elliot’s body was cremated at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles, California. Her cremated remains were later buried in Mount Sinai Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles. Another notable final footprint at Mount Sinai; Don Rickles.

She is mentioned as the host of a party in the Elton John biopic, Rocketman. The party occurs after Elton’s first performance at the Troubador in Los Angeles. She is portrayed by Rachel Redleaf in the 2019 film Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood.

On this day in 1983, filmmaker Luis Buñuel died in Mexico City from diabetes complications at the age of 83. Born Luis Buñuel Portolés on 22 February 1900 in Calanda, Aragon, Spain.

His first picture, Un Chien Andalou—made in the silent era—is still viewed regularly throughout the world and retains its power to shock the viewer.  His last film, That Obscure Object of Desire—made 48 years later—won him Best Director awards from the National Board of Review and the National Society of Film Critics. Writer Octavio Paz called Buñuel’s work “the marriage of the film image to the poetic image, creating a new reality…scandalous and subversive”.

Often associated with the surrealist movement of the 1920s, Buñuel created films from the 1920s through the 1970s. Having worked in Europe and North America, and in French and Spanish, Buñuel’s films also spanned various genres. Despite this variety, filmmaker John Huston believed that, regardless of genre, a Buñuel film is so distinctive as to be instantly recognizable, or, as Ingmar Bergman put it, “Buñuel nearly always made Buñuel films”. My favorite film of his is Belle de Jour. It won the Golden Lion and the Pasinetti Award for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival in 1967.

Buñuel became an accomplished hypnotist. He was often to insist that watching movies was a form of hypnosis: “This kind of cinematographic hypnosis is no doubt due to the darkness of the theatre and to the rapidly changing scenes, lights, and camera movements, which weaken the spectator’s critical intelligence and exercise over him a kind of fascination.”

Starting at age 17, Buñuel steadily dated the future poet and dramatist Concha Méndez, with whom he vacationed every summer at San Sebastián. He introduced her to his friends at the Residencia as his fiancée. After five years, she broke off the relationship, citing Buñuel’s “insufferable character”.

In 1926 he met his future wife, Jeanne Rucar Lefebvre, a gymnastics teacher who had won a bronze medal at the 1924 Paris Olympics. Buñuel courted her in a formal Aragonese manner, complete with a chaperone. They married in 1934 and remained married until his death.

The Final Footprint

“Luis waited for death for a long time, like a good Spaniard, and when he died he was ready. His relationship with death was like that one has with a woman. He felt the love, hate, tenderness, ironical detachment of a long relationship, and he didn’t want to miss the last encounter, the moment of union. “I hope I will die alive,” he told me. At the end it was as he had wished. His last words were ‘I’m dying’.”

Long-time friend and collaborator, Jean-Claude Carrière

In 1982, he wrote (along with Carrière) his autobiography, Mon Dernier Soupir (My Last Sigh), which provides an account of his life, friends, and family as well as a representation of his eccentric personality. In it, he recounts dreams, encounters with many well-known writers, actors, and artists such as Pablo Picasso and Charlie Chaplin as well as antics, like dressing up as a nun and walking around town.

Buñuel once told his friend, novelist Carlos Fuentes: “I’m not afraid of death. I’m afraid of dying alone in a hotel room, with my bags open and a shooting script on the night table. I must know whose fingers will close my eyes.” Fuentes has recounted that Buñuel spent his last week in hospital discussing theology with the Jesuit brother Julián Pablo Fernández, a long time friend. His funeral was very private, involving only family and close friends, among them poets Octavio Paz and Homero Aridjis.

Buñuel was cremated.

#RIP #OTD in 1983 actor (Separate Tables, Murder by Death, Death on the Nile, The Pink Panther, James Bond in Casino Royale), soldier, memoirist, novelist David Niven died from ALS at his chalet in Château-d’Œx, Switzerland aged 73. Château-d’Œx Cemetery

Have you planned yours yet?

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