A ‘once in a century’ exhibition of Vincent Van Gogh’s artwork is set to open at London’s National Gallery featuring 60 masterpieces by the troubled artist.
The Poets and Lovers exhibition brings together some of the painter’s most famous works from his final years, which he largely spent in Arles in the south of France.
He lived in the area from February 1888 to May 1989, before infamously cutting off part of his own ear following an argument with a friend, after which he was moved to an asylum at Saint-Rémy until May 1890.
He continued to paint up until his death in July 1890.
Works contained in the National Gallery exhibition include Starry Night over the Rhône, Sunflowers, The Olive Trees and various self-portraits.
The Poets and Lovers exhibition brings together some of the painter’s most famous works from his final years, which he largely spent in Arles in the south of France
Works contained in the exhibition include Starry Night over the Rhône (pictured)
The exhibition will reunite two of the seven-painting sequence entitled Sunflowers
The troubled artist painted multiple self-portraits which are also featuring in the exhibition
The National Gallery is putting on the exhibition in its 200th year, 100 years after it acquired two paintings by the artist: Sunflowers and Van Gogh’s Chair.
It is the first time it has put on a major Van Gogh exhibition and includes works loaned by museums all around the world such as the Musée d’Orsay, the Kröller-Müller Museum, the Van Gogh Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
The collection was put together by Van Gogh scholar Cornelia Homburg together with Christopher Riopelle, the Neil Westreich Curator of Post 1800 Paintings at the National Gallery.
The period from 1888 saw Van Gogh create some of his most recognised works – although during his lifetime his talents were sadly largely ignored.
Moving to Arles from Paris, he famously said: ‘It seems to me almost impossible to work in Paris unless one has some place of retreat where one can recuperate’.
The National Gallery’s Sunflowers is one in a series of seven that are now scattered around the world.
In 2022 the painting found renewed fame after activists from Just Stop Oil threw a can of soup over it in a protest against climate change.
Visitors view the Poets and Lovers exhibition, made up of 60 of Van Gogh’s later masterpieces
The exhibition opens to the public on September 14 with tickets starting from £24
The exhibition coincides with the 200th anniversary of the National Gallery’s foundation
It features some of the artist’s most transformational work from the last three years of his life
The period saw Van Gogh use some of his brightest colours and these are set to be on display at the Trafalgar Square museum
Protesters Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland were convicted of damaging property by a jury after a four day trial at Southwark Crown Court in July.
Director of the National Gallery Gabriele Finaldi wrote in his forward: ‘Vincent van Gogh’s stay in Arles and Saint-Rémy in the south of France between February 1888 and May 1890 resulted in works of astounding originality and a unique expressiveness.
‘They include the Sunflowers series, the Starry Night paintings and some of the artist’s most striking portraits and landscapes.
‘Fired up by the intensity of the light and landscapes of Provence and the strong personalities of the people he encountered there, Van Gogh imagined his friends as a poet and as lovers; the modest public park in front of the Yellow House became a ‘Poet’s Garden’, and the overgrown hospital garden at Saint-Rémy the refuge for lovers.
‘The exhibition explores not so much this intense period of activity as a whole, but rather how Van Gogh sought at this time to transform models and motifs into ideals and myths in an effort to create a highly expressive oeuvre that would pioneer – in his words – the ‘art of the future’.’
The exhibition opens on September 14 and will run until January 19, 2025, and tickets start from £24.
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