Most people today associate Vincent van Gogh with sunflowers and starry nights. He found the inspiration for such masterpieces of modern art in Provence, in the south of France, where he lived for just over two years, from February 1888 to May 1890. These would be the last years of the Dutch painter’s short but vivid life – Van Gogh died in Auvers-sur-Oise in northern France in July 1890 at the age of 37.
Settling in Arles, he established himself at the Yellow House, where he awaited the arrival of his friend and mentor, the painter Paul Gauguin. The visit ended in disaster, with Van Gogh suffering a breakdown, cutting off his left ear, and eventually admitting himself to the mental health hospital of St Paul at St Rémy. During this period, he created an extraordinary body of work, both drawings and paintings, that are the focus of this beautifully curated exhibition.
This article is part of our series marking 200 years of the National Gallery.
Surprisingly, this is the first major exhibition devoted to Van Gogh at the National Gallery in London. It represents the high point of a series of exhibitions planned to celebrate the gallery’s bicentenary. It also marks 100 years since the industrialist, collector and philanthropist Samuel Courtauld helped the gallery acquire Van Gogh’s Sunflowers and The Chair for the collection.
The title of the show, Poets and Lovers, refers to how Van Gogh saw poetry in the landscape, and was often inspired by literary sources, from writers such as Zola and Dickens, to the Italian poets Petrarch and Boccaccio.
Consolations of nature
Van Gogh’s starting point was always nature, but he drew endlessly on his own imagination. Instead of describing reality, he transformed his figures and their settings through repetition and the subjective use of colour and line, signalling a modern symbolist approach to painting. Rather than produce a naturalistic and individualised representation of a man sowing seeds, for example, he created a universal type that suggested continuity, regrowth and the cycle of the seasons.
In the first room of the exhibition we encounter the eponymous Lover, modelled by Van Gogh’s friend, Lieutenant Milliet, in the uniform of the Zouaves (a light infantry regiment of the French army). For the poet, he chose his artist friend Eugène Boch, whose gaunt features and narrow face reminded him of the 13th-century poet Dante Alighieri.
The exhibition begins and ends with gardens: the public park at Arles, the garden of Saint Paul at Saint-Rémy, and the biblical garden at Gethsemane, represented by the olive trees that grew beyond the asylum. Van Gogh described the park at Arles as “the poet’s garden”, an imaginary space frequented by the writers and artists of the past.
He was inspired by the fêtes champêtres (garden parties) depicted by painters Antoine Watteau and Adolphe Monticelli, and yet the park scenes and gardens featuring in the second room appear alienating and at times claustrophobic. One is reminded that Van Gogh was unpopular with the inhabitants of Arles, who signed a petition to drive this drunkard out of town.
While in Arles, Van Gogh wrestled with the relationship between nature and his own imaginative interpretation of reality. At the hilltop of Montmajour, he worked with a reed pen carved from the very reeds that grew in the landscape. He was driven by the need to harmonise his landscapes and often finished his paintings in the studio.
The decorative became a central concern, and a surprising theme that emerges from the show is his fascination with display. He was determined to decorate the Yellow House with paintings, such as Vincent’s Chair, The Bedroom and Starry Night over the Rhone, all three representing a fusion of naturalism and symbolism. The rush seat chair and candle symbolise Van Gogh’s own rustic simplicity; The Bedroom (on loan from the Art Institute of Chicago) was intended to suggest sleep.
The theme of decoration is developed further in Room 5, where the highlight is La Berceuse (The Lullaby), flanked by two Sunflowers (one on a yellow background and one on a blue background). Van Gogh originally devised the idea of a triptych, lending the paintings a religious dimension.
His intention, in this stylised rendition of the postman’s wife, Augustine Roulin, was to suggest “consolation”, just as the symbolic mother soothes her baby. Van Gogh also saw the connection between the rhythms of music and the internal rhythms of his portraits and landscapes. This is particularly evident in the final room, where versions of the Alpilles paintings and the Olive Trees series are juxtaposed.
In the end, however, the most striking aspect of Van Gogh’s Provençal paintings is his expressive use of colour. In his repetitions and variations – the Arlesiennes, the Sunflowers and the Olive Trees – he plays with different colour combinations. And yet the paintings that continue to beguile us today are mere shadows of the original brightly coloured canvases that he produced.
Technical analysis has revealed that the red lake pigments and chrome yellows that Van Gogh so loved have lost their intensity or even disappeared over time, affecting the colour balance in numerous compositions.
But does this really matter? This exhibition is sure to be a crowd pleaser. In 2024, Van Gogh continues to work his magic and the National Gallery rightly celebrates Courtauld’s foresight in buying the Sunflowers at a time when they were still affordable.
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Frances Fowle does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
