One hundred years after acquiring a copy of the famous “Sunflowers”, the National Gallery in London is dedicating a major retrospective to Vincent van Gogh, exhibiting in particular three of the Dutch painter’s major works, conceived as a triptych but never shown together.
The exhibition, entitled “Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers”, focuses on the post-impressionist painter’s output during the two years – between February 1888 and May 1890 – that he spent in the south of France, in Arles and Saint-Rémy-de-Provence.
“His art took on a new breadth, a new inventiveness” during this stay, Christopher Riopelle, co-curator of the exhibition, presented from September 14 as part of the program celebrating the bicentenary of the National Gallery, explained to AFP.
“He has become even more enterprising and daring in his way of painting, with new freedoms, new rhythms taking hold” in his work, he adds.
The exhibition brings together around fifty paintings and drawings, which demonstrate Van Gogh’s talent for arousing emotions through his subtle and intense play of colours.
Many are already well-known masterpieces, such as “Starry Night,” but some had never left their original private collections or museums.
In one of the rooms with yellow walls, three paintings are exhibited: two “Sunflowers”, one belonging to the National Gallery since 1924, and the other specially loaned by the Washington museum, which surround “La Berceuse”, a painting representing a woman seated on an armchair.
“By early 1889, he had already done five or six of his paintings (depicting sunflowers) in his studio, and he wondered how he wanted to show them (…). And he had this great idea,” says Christopher Riopelle, adding that the painter’s intention was to create a setting “that would be something comforting,” as he explained in one of his many letters to his brother Theo.
This is the first time that the works have been exhibited together in this way, strictly following Van Gogh’s project.
– Variations on the same motif –
The exhibition “highlights the extent to which Van Gogh used recurring themes” in his work, such as the peasant, the poet, or the Arlesienne, with the desire to imagine “archetypes”, explains Cornelia Homburg, co-curator.
For the painter, “it was his chance to leave his mark,” she adds, insisting that the exhibition strives to “respect the artistic ambition” of Van Gogh.
Obviously, the nature and landscapes of the south of France are at the heart of the works and sources of multiple variations, as many ways of arousing different emotions in the viewer.
This is demonstrated by a series on olive trees, another on the mountains around Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, or the gardens of a psychiatric institution in the same town, where Vincent van Gogh stayed for several months.
“He wasn’t just this tormented, suffering person. He was someone who was deeply attached to the beauty of nature, to his friends and family, and deeply attached to having a successful career as an avant-garde artist,” insists Christopher Riopelle.
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