Tate is to stage its first Vincent van Gogh exhibition since 1947 and the first to explore the artist through his relationship with Britain.
Details were announced on Friday of a show in which 40 works by the artist will come to London in spring 2019, including Starry Night Over the Rhône from Musée d’Orsay in Paris and one of his Sunflowers paintings, which is being lent by the National Gallery.
Van Gogh lodged in a room in Lambeth, south London, when he was in his early 20s and fell in love with the capital, walking everywhere.
In January 1874, he wrote to his brother Theo: “Things are going well for me here, I have a wonderful home and it’s a great pleasure for me to observe London and the English way of life, and the English themselves, and I also have nature and art and poetry, and if that isn’t enough, what is?”
The Tate Britain exhibition will tell the story of the young Van Gogh, a trainee art dealer, and the ways in which London prompted him to explore new avenues of life, art and love.
It will show how he responded to the art he saw, by painters such as John Constable and John Everett Millais, and explore his love of William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens. On loan from the Museu de Arte de São Paulo is L’Arlésienne 1890, a portrait that has a Dickens novel in its foreground.
Tate said the exhibition would include more than 40 works by Van Gogh, the largest collection of his paintings to be shown in the UK for nearly a decade.
Other loans include Shoes from Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and two later works painted during his time in Saint-Paul asylum: At Eternity’s Gate from Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, the Netherlands, and Prisoners Exercising from Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow.
Tate’s previous Van Gogh exhibition shortly after the second world war was hugely influential, introducing him to British audiences and a new generation of artists, and the upcoming show will include works by artists he influenced, such as Christopher Wood, David Bomberg and Francis Bacon.
Alex Farquharson, the director of Tate Britain, said: “His stay in Britain changed his vision of the world and himself, encouraging him to become an artist. This is an exciting opportunity for us to reveal the impact Britain had on Van Gogh as well as the enormous influence he had on British artists.
“Tate’s last Van Gogh exhibition was in 1947 and introduced his work to a whole generation of artists working in Britain. We’re thrilled to be welcoming so many important and groundbreaking paintings to the gallery.”
- Van Gogh and Britain will be at Tate Britain in London from 27 March until 11 August 2019
