Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers at the National Gallery, London

Last week I headed down to London for a couple of days to attend two exhibitions, the first of which was the Van Gogh exhibition at the National Gallery. Van Gogh is one of my favourite painters so when I saw the announcement I knew that I would be attending. The exhibition is being billed as a once in a century event and it was easy to see why, there are paintings on loan from galleries as far away as the United States and Japan and some that are in private collections and rarely ever seen in public. There were also paintings that are displayed together again for the first time since Van Gogh painted them.

I’ve seen a great deal of Van Gogh’s paintings over the years – at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam of course but also the Musee D’Orsay (Starry Night over the Rhone is on loan from them here) and even the Munch Museum in Oslo but it still somehow surprises me just how prolific he was. There are 61 of his paintings and drawings on display here covering six rooms, each with their own theme though the overarching motif is that of his time in the South of France, the parks and landscapes he painted, as well as the gardens of the hospital in Saint-Remy where he admitted himself in 1889.

I was really impressed by how close you were able to get to the paintings which allowed you to really appreciate each brushstroke, though this does have its problems. I was also surprised to learn that this is the first time the National Gallery has done an exhibition devoted solely to Van Gogh and is in part to celebrate the Gallery’s 200th birthday but also the 100 year anniversary of the purchase of the Gallery’s version of Sunflowers, one of the first sunflowers he painted. One of the highlights of the exhibition is being able to see it alongside the version of Sunflowers owned by the Philadelphia Museum of Art which has never left the US since its purchase therefore putting them together for the first time since they were painted.

Some of my other favourites included the Poet’s Garden (Public Garden in Arles) 1888 showing the garden in front of his home in Arles.

A Wheatfield with Cypresses, 1889 depicting a scene at the Alpilles mountains.

Tree Trunks in the Grass, 1890, another scene from the garden at Saint-Remy.

And of course the perennial favourite, Starry Night over the Rhone.

A really great look at some of Van Gogh’s work I’d highly recommend it.

The Practicalities:

The exhibition is on until 19 January 2025 and they’re staggering the purchase of tickets so as of posting tickets are only available up to the beginning of December. Tickets are timed entry and you should probably aim to be there about 10 minutes or so beforehand. There are bag searches as you enter. Entry is at the Getty entrance to the right hand side of the steps to the main entrance if approaching from Trafalgar Square.

There are various strands of ticket prices – a standard adult was £28. You can also buy an audio guide for an extra £5 – I did this and found it very good but it’s not essential as you are given a free booklet with snippets of information about each painting by the entrance to the exhibition. It takes roughly an hour or so to go around, though as far as I’m aware you can stay there as long as you like.