Van Gogh at the National Gallery - What the Critics Say
The hotly anticipated Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers show at the National Gallery in London is now open. It is the first major exhibition at the National Gallery to be devoted to Van Gogh and its staging marks the gallery’s bicentenary.
The show features 61 of the artist's masterpieces including his ‘Starry Night over the Rhône’ (1888, Musée d’Orsay) and ‘The Yellow House’ (1888, Van Gogh Museum), as well as the National Gallery's own ‘Sunflowers’ (1888) and ‘Van Gogh's Chair’ (1889).
The National Gallery show has garnered rave reviews and received five stars from all of Britain's critics.
Rachel Cooke at the Guardian described the show as 'eye-aching, heartbreaking and unmissable':
'it comprises no fewer than 61 works, almost every one of which is worth 10 minutes, at least, of your time. What incredible loans. Portrait of a Peasant (1888), a painting of an old gardener, Patience Escalier, with a green-tinged beard, has never before left the Norton Simon collection in Pasadena, California. The Philadelphia Museum of Art has sent Sunflowers (1889), enabling it to hang beside the National Gallery’s Sunflowers (1888) for the first time since they were in the artist’s studio; together with La Berceuse (The Lullaby, 1889), which has travelled from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, these form a triptych, as the artist always intended.'
Melanie McDonagh at The Evening Standard also awarded this show five stars in her review.
'Almost all the work is in motion; writhing trees, ploughed fields like waves — in his drawings, undistracted by colour, we see spiky pencil strokes going places.
His technique varies: sometimes Impressionist, as in a beautiful study of dappled undergrowth or in his unabashedly romantic white Roses, more often his own trademark impasto: thick, dizzying swirls of paint.
What a wonderful artist; what a wonderful show.'
Emily LaBarge of The New York Times describes the show as
' a fresh and tender vision of the well-known artist...
The exhibition’s focus is on the painter’s two final years, when his distinctive writhing line, hallucinatory palette, impastoed surfaces and romantic visions reached new heights'.
Eddy Frankel of Time Out gives the show five stars and describes it as 'mesmerising'
'This mesmerising show of kaleidoscopic, emotional art brings together work from the last two years of his life, years spent in Provence turning painting inside out and mentally falling apart in the process.'
For The FT's Rachel Spence,
'...the artist’s southern sojourn produced some of the most astonishing paintings of the modern era. This comet trail of splendour is now mapped by Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers, a scintillating exhibition at London’s National Gallery'.
In her five star review, Laura Freeman of The Times describes the show as 'a beautifully put together exhibition about a blisteringly original vision'
'I'm sceptical about "once in a century" exhibitions. They seem to come along once every quarter. In this case, believe the hype. Van Gogh: Poets & Lovers is a five-star firecracker'.
The exhibition runs 14 September 2024 - 19 January 2025. Ticket prices start from £24.00 per person.
If you are not able to get to the show or want to read up on the themes of the show before you visit, do take a look at the exhibition catalogue that accompanies the show.