'Spectacular': Lord Clancarty reviews 'Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers'

1888: The Stevedores | © Private collection. Photo: Bonnie H Morrison

Earl of Clancarty

@NickClancarty

Such has been the buzz surrounding it, few can be unaware of the new Vincent van Gogh exhibition at the National Gallery. The gallery itself is having a celebratory moment: 200 years since its founding; 100 since it purchased the important paintings Sunflowers and Van Gogh’s Chair at a time when van Gogh was only just beginning to be accepted.

Both of these works are part of this spectacular exhibition of paintings and drawings. It is remarkable that it covers a mere two years – February 1888 to May 1890 – of the artist’s albeit short career, when he decamped from Paris to the south of France and, inspired by the colours of the landscape, developed the expressive style for which he is most renowned. It is also the best-known period, beginning with him living in the Yellow House in Arles – the famous painting of which is in the exhibition – and where he had hoped, but failed, to set up an artists’ colony. Paul Gauguin visited, they painted side-by-side, but Gauguin fled when van Gogh cut off his ear. Van Gogh lost the house and moved into the hospital at nearby Saint-Rémy. Yet throughout this short time he produced hundreds of paintings of which inevitably the current exhibition, although extensive, is a snapshot.

Still, the beauty of an exhibition like this is to discover paintings you did not know existed as well as those you’ve only seen in books. There is Starry Night Over the Rhône but also The Stevedores, a wonderful painting borrowed from a private collection alongside the famous and other works which deserve to be better known than they are. Of the six versions of Sunflowers that still exist, there are two in this exhibition.

It is remarkable that it covers a mere two years of the artist’s albeit short career

Van Gogh’s art is avowedly human-centred. He paints people and interiors, but outside it is almost always a domesticated or cultivated nature: parks, gardens, tilled fields, olive groves.

I went round the exhibition with my teenage daughter, so was also able to see it afresh through her eyes. All the flowers are so sad, she said, they are all dying. Alongside the intensity of the vision – van Gogh spent a lot of time working on colour juxtapositions – there is a melancholy, a sense of transience never far below the surface. What, for example, are those two strange rectangular mounds behind the couple in Starry Night Over the Rhône? Is it tarpaulin covering ropes and chains or are they shrouds – intimations of the future? 

It might seem churlish to point to any weakness in such magnificent work, but even by van Gogh’s own admission, he struggled in painting the nearby mountains he became interested in late in his stay – as an essay in the informative accompanying catalogue points out. In 1890, van Gogh returned north to the softer landscape of Auvers-sur-Oise, but taking his new style with him, for what would be the final months of his life – and the last great paintings. But for that we need another exhibition. 

Earl of Clancarty is a Crossbench peer

Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers
Curated by: Cornelia Homburg & Christopher Riopelle, with Julien Domercq
Venue: National Gallery, until 19 January 2025

PoliticsHome Newsletters

Get the inside track on what MPs and Peers are talking about. Sign up to The House's morning email for the latest insight and reaction from Parliamentarians, policy-makers and organisations.