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Tate Britain presents Van Gogh exhibition exploring his relationship with Britain

(People's Daily Online)    15:00, March 28, 2019

Tate Britain presents ​Exhibition Van Gogh and Britain (Photo by Tianxing Bai)

The Tate Britain museum recently opened a major exhibition to celebrate Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), which will run from March 27 to Aug. 11, 2019. The EY Exhibition, Van Gogh and Britain, is the first exhibition to take a new look at the artist through his relationship with Britain. It explores both how Van Gogh was inspired by British art, literature and culture throughout his career and how he, in turn, inspired a number of British artists, from Vanessa Bell to Francis Bacon.

Bringing together the largest group of Van Gogh paintings shown in the UK for nearly a decade, the exhibition includes over 50 works by the artist from public and private collections around the world. They include Self-Portrait 1889 from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, Starry Night 1888 from the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, and the rarely loaned Sunflowers 1888 from the National Gallery, London. The exhibition will also feature his late works including At Eternity's Gate 1890 from the Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo.

Van Gogh - Sunflowers 1888

Van Gogh spent several crucial years in London between 1873 and 1876, writing 'I love London' in a letter to his brother Theo. Arriving as a young trainee art dealer, the vast modern city prompted him to explore new avenues of life, art and love. The exhibition reveals Van Gogh's enthusiasm for British culture during his stay and his subsequent artistic career. It shows how he responded to the art he saw, including works by John Constable and John Everett Millais, as well as his love of British writers from William Shakespeare to Christina Rossetti. Charles Dickens, in particular, influenced Van Gogh's style and subject matter throughout his career. L'Arlésienne 1890, a portrait he painted in the last year of his life in the south of France, features a favorite book by Dickens in the foreground.

The exhibition also explores Van Gogh's passion for British graphic artists and prints. Despite his poverty, he searched out and collected around 2,000 engravings, most from English magazines such as the Illustrated London News. 'My whole life is aimed at making the things from everyday life that Dickens describes and these artists draw' he wrote in his first years as a struggling artist. He returned to these prints in his final months, painting his only image of London, Prisoners Exercising, from Gustave Doré's print of Newgate Prison.

Van Gogh- Olive Trees. National Galleries of Scotland

Tracing Van Gogh from his obscure years in London to the extraordinary fame he achieved in Britain in the 1950s, the exhibition shows how his uncompromising art and life paved the way for modern British artists like Matthew Smith, Christopher Wood and David Bomberg. It concludes with a distinguished group of portraits by Francis Bacon based on a Van Gogh self-portrait known only from photographs since its destruction during the Second World War. (Tianxing Bai)

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