To celebrate its 200th birthday, the National Gallery has just opened a spectacular new show, Van Gogh, Poets & Lovers. Surprisingly perhaps, it’s the National’s first exhibition devoted to Dutch artist Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890).
The National opened in May 1824. As current staff considered the best way to salute its bicentennial, they realised 2024 would also mark 100 years since the museum acquired Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. It was gifted along with another iconic work, Van Gogh’s Chair, by textile magnate, philanthropist and art collector Samuel Courtauld. With that in mind, it must have been an easy decision to mount this show.
Sunflowers is one of the most popular paintings in the National’s world class collection and one of the most famous paintings on earth. It’s also one of the most valuable, likely worth hundreds of millions of pounds were it to be offered for sale.
The exhibition focusses on the two-year period when Van Gogh (or Vincent, as he simply and purposively signed his name) left Paris to live and work in the South of France. “The painter of the future is a colourist such as there hasn’t been before.” These were the artist’s prophetic words in a letter to his brother Theo in early 1888, shortly after arriving in Provence.
It was here Van Gogh began working in an entirely new and revolutionary way, swiftly putting his ideas about art, and particularly the expressive power of colour, into what became his most significant work. He began a journey into the passionate and colourful world of his imagination, inspired by poets, writers and fellow artists, by gardens, nature and the exceptional light of Provence. Working at a fast, intense, but highly focussed pace, he created hundreds of paintings and drawings in the months that followed.
Many of these were done while Van Gogh was a patient at the St Remy psychiatric hospital. As is well known, he suffered a series of mental breakdowns including the infamous ear-chopping episode. It’s thought likely that he suffered from bipolar disorder.
You may be familiar with the myth that the artist’s genius lay in his “madness”, that he painted in “the fever of hallucinations and took inspiration from illness”. In truth, he was unable to work at all during his frequent illnesses and breakdowns. It was only when he felt well enough that he was able to work. Then, his creative output became prolific. Van Gogh was given a room in the hospital to use as a studio. He especially loved the hospital’s vast grounds and gardens, which became a favourite subject of his art.
Nienke Bakker, senior curator at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, firmly believes that Van Gogh’s artwork was not “created by a crazy mind. He knew very well what he was doing. Until the end, Van Gogh painted in spite of his illness, not because of it. It’s important to remember that.”
In May 1890 Van Gogh discharged himself from the hospital, leaving Provence for a village in northern France to be closer to his brother Theo. Over the next 70 days, seemingly better and inspired by the natural environment surrounding the village, he painted 75 paintings and hundreds of drawings. Sadly, the artist’s wellness was only temporary; he died soon after, aged 37, from a self-inflicted gunshot.
Whether you’ve seen Sunflowers once or a hundred times, the exhibition will leave you breathless. There are so many unmissable gems in this outstanding and beautifully-presented show including many pieces rarely seen in public.
I found it a joy and comfort to see afresh the artist’s better known paintings like The Bedroom and The Yellow House, and thrilling to view gorgeous works I’d never seen before – many on exceptional loan from galleries and private collections around the world. The wild clouds and swaying trees in Olive Trees with the Alpilles in the Background. The glow and shimmer of Starry Night over the Rhone. The tender portrait of La Berceuse (The Lullaby) displayed for the first time between two versions of Sunflowers, just as Van Gogh had imagined in a sketch to Theo.
But most of all, it felt a really special treat to be invited into Van Gogh’s rich and intimate world, thickly layered with soft pink roses and oleanders, bright red poppies, swirling blue skies, trees, grass and fields expressed in a dozen shades of green. I also couldn’t help thinking how the joy, hope and vibrancy in so many of these paintings and drawings were in such sharp contrast to the sadness and suffering Van Gogh experienced away from his art.
Van Gogh: Poets & Lovers runs until 19 January 2025 at the National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, London WC2N 5DN.
Find out more here. Watch the Exhibition Trailer here.
Main Image, Vincent Van Gogh, Sunflowers, 1888 ©The National Gallery, London.