The National Gallery in London is celebrating its 200th anniversary with its first exhibition dedicated to Vincent van Gogh. This year also marks the 100th anniversary of the acquisition of its most popular painting by any artist: Sunflowers (1888).
The show’s focus will be on the 27 months in 1888-90 that Van Gogh spent in Provence, initially working in the town of Arles, partly at the Yellow House, and, after mutilating his ear, in the asylum just outside Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. Along with his last few weeks in Auvers-sur-Oise, this was where he produced his greatest work.
Securing Van Gogh loans is notoriously difficult, but the National Gallery has been promised 47 paintings and 13 drawings. These include some of the artist’s most popular pictures, such as The Yellow House (1888, on loan from the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam) and The Bedroom (1889, Art Institute of Chicago). Among works from private collections is one from the former American casino boss Steve Wynn, The Trinquetaille Bridge (1888), a riverside view of a quay by the Rhône river.
Van Gogh’s The Bedroom (1889) © Art Institute of Chicago
Although the idea of celebrating Van Gogh is fairly obvious, the National Gallery’s theme—“poets and lovers”—is likely to come as a surprise. This reflects the terms that he used to describe two of his Arles sitters, an artist and a soldier: The Poet (Portrait of Eugène Boch) (1888, Musée d’Orsay, Paris) and The Lover (Portrait of Lieutenant Milliet) (1888, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, The Netherlands). Van Gogh used the terms in a very idiosyncratic way—and it will be interesting to see how the two themes are presented in the show.
The exhibition will also explore groupings: painting in series, seeing works as pendants, and the use of contrasts to create harmony. As a National Gallery spokesperson points out, the show promises to present a “less familiar image of the artist”: one of lucid intention, deliberation and great ambition.
• Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers, National Gallery, London, 14 September-
19 January 2025
• Martin Bailey writes a weekly blog for The Art Newspaper on the artist: Adventures with Van Gogh
