A Colorful Life

The last time that Tate opened a Vincent van Gogh show, it caused a sensation: the year was 1947 and record numbers of people left post-war Britain behind to enter the Dutchman’s world. Walking around Tate Britain’s current exhibition, Van Gogh and Britain, it’s easy to see why we keep falling for his kaleidoscopic view of the world. The Millbank art gallery’s blockbuster show celebrates the cultural interchange that began when van Gogh first set foot on British soil in 1837 – and continues 182 years later. To demonstrate this, Van Gogh and Britain exhibits art by those who reside in the same realm as van Gogh, as well as more than 45 works by the legendary Post-Impressionist.

INSIDE THE EXHIBITION

Tate Britain’s spacious, labyrinthine galleries prove to be a suitably grand setting for this fascinating exhibition and allow this large collection enough room to breathe. It’s organised in a methodical, manageable way that doesn’t overwhelm visitors. Van Gogh and Britain begins with the artist’s arrival in the capital aged 20, to start working for the Covent Garden art dealer Goupil. You are then sent on a chronological journey through his masterpieces, death, posthumous glory and to his afterlife, which has all been made possible through the artwork of those he went on to inspire.

THE LONDON LIFE

Van Gogh’s letters home piece together his three years in England. Trials in his personal life caused the artist to grow increasingly melancholic and Tate presents us with the likes of Meindert Hobbema’s oil painting The Avenue at Middelharnis. Van Gogh saw this stark landscape hanging in London’s National Gallery; its depiction of a lone figure on an avenue became an enduring trope in van Gogh’s paintings. This room of chilly, muted scenes takes you to autumnal Europe.

Print-making was a booming business while van Gogh was in London and, through his work at Goupil, he became a collector. This stage in his artistic journey is mapped out with a range of van Gogh’s drawings, following the black-and-white style of these images. He bought a print of prisoners exercising inside Newgate Prison and, during the final year of his life, van Gogh returned to this picture to create his only painted scene of London. The vivacity of the brush strokes and colours that you can pick out clash with the bleak subject matter – it’s a peek into van Gogh’s complicated, mournful psyche.

THE AFTERLIFE

Before the attention of the world elevated his talents to greatness, van Gogh shot himself. This exhibition pushes you through time from his death in 1890 to 1910, when his work was shown to British art fans for the first time.

That show was credited with creating the term ‘Post-Impressionist’ and here, you can appreciate how the shock of this modern style helped spread van Gogh’s name.

Next, the flourishing impact of the Dutchman on British artists is presented, primarily with paintings by Matthew Smith, Spencer Gore and Harold Gilman, also known as the Camden Town Group. Van Gogh’s 1889 oil painting of the pine trees and cedar bushes beyond his Saint-Rémy hospital room dominates this gallery: flown over from LA, it’s a dramatic scene of bloody reds and swirling greens in a flamboyant carved frame.

Van Gogh and Britain saves its headliners for the final rooms, which helps you see why the painter became a giant in the decades after his death. Van Gogh’s sunflowers stand proudly in a room blooming with painted petals – his influence on the artists who studied him spread across these walls.

It is easy to buy into the idea of van Gogh as the tragic hero, a troubled mastermind who died without knowing the recognition that his name would achieve globally. What this exhibition does, however, is encourage us to remember the whole human, by taking you on his artistic journey. More than a colourful catwalk of greatest hits, Van Gogh and Britain is a map to plot the creative people who travelled through his life – as well as those who painted his epilogue. To 11 Aug. Tate Britain, Millbank, SW1P 4RG. T: 020-7887 8888. www.tate.org.uk

By Neil Simpson