Which artist cut off part of his own ear?

Vincent van Gogh, in Arles in December 1888, after a violent falling-out with Gauguin, who had been living with him. He removed part or possibly all of his left ear and delivered it to a woman at a nearby house. He was hospitalised, produced a self-portrait with the bandage soon afterwards, and shot himself about eighteen months later at thirty-seven.

The productivity in that period is difficult to take in. He painted for roughly ten years in total and produced something like 2,100 works, of which around 860 are oil paintings, and the majority of the famous ones come from the last two years - the sunflowers, the bedroom, the wheatfields, and The Starry Night, painted from the window of the asylum at Saint-Remy where he had committed himself voluntarily.

He sold very little in his lifetime, and the standard story that he sold exactly one painting is not quite right - the documented sales are few, and he lived on money from his brother Theo. The correspondence between them, over 800 letters, is why we know his mind so well; he wrote about what he was trying to do with colour with a clarity that art historians still quarry. Theo died six months after Vincent, and it was Theo's widow Johanna who spent decades getting the work exhibited and the letters published, which is largely why anyone knows the name.