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What event ended Paul Gauguin’s stay with Vincent van Gogh in Arles?

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Self-portrait painting by Paul Gauguin showing the artist with a mustache, yellow halo, and stylized plants against a vivid orange background with green and red fruit. — Paul Gauguin Self-portrait by Paul Gauguin, oil on wood, 1889; in the Chester Dale Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. 79.2 × 51.3 cm.

Paul Gauguin’s stay with Vincent van Gogh in Arles ended in December 1888 following a violent altercation between the two artists.12

The traditional account states that after a heated argument, van Gogh chased Gauguin with a razor before turning the blade on himself and severing his own left ear. Following this incident, Gauguin departed for Paris, effectively ending their collaboration.12

However, some art historians have challenged this version of events. Based on an examination of police records and correspondence, researchers have proposed that Gauguin may have been responsible for the injury, potentially using a sword during the fight, and that the two artists subsequently agreed to a "pact of silence" to protect Gauguin by claiming the act was self-mutilation. Regardless of the specific details of the injury, the intensity of their volatile relationship and the resulting crisis brought their time working together to an abrupt conclusion.12