The EY Exhibition: Van Gogh and Great Britain

From 27th of March 2019, Tate Britain devotes an important exhibition on the relationship between Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) and Great Britain.

The EY Exhibition: Van Gogh and Great Britain will be the first exhibition devoted to this aspect in Van Gogh's work. It will highlight how he drew on British art, literature and culture throughout his career, and conversely, how he influenced generations of artists. British, from Walter Sickert to Francis Bacon.

Bringing together the largest number of Van Gogh paintings exhibited in the UK for nearly a decade, The EY Exhibition: Van Gogh and Britain will bring together more than 45 works from public and private collections around the world. whole. Among which: Self-portrait (National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1889), L'Arlesienne (Museu de Arte de São Paolo, 1890), The Starry Night (Musée d'Orsay, Paris, 1888), Les Chaussures (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, 1886) and Sunflowers (National Gallery, London, 1888), which are the object of an exceptional loan. The exhibition will also feature late works, two of which are executed by Van Gogh during his stay at the Saint-Paul de Mausole asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence: At the Gate of Eternity (Kröller-Müller Museum). Otterlo, 1890) and Prisoner's Round (State Museum of Pushkin State Fine Arts, Moscow, 1890).

Between 1873 and 1876, Van Gogh spent several years in London, writing to his brother Theo: 'I love London'. Arrived as a young apprentice art dealer, the great modern metropolis was to open new horizons in the fields of art; of existence and love. The exhibition will highlight Van Gogh's enthusiasm for British culture during his stay and his subsequent artistic career. In particular, she will show how he was able to react to the works he discovered there, including those of John Constable and John Everett Millais as well as his love of British writers, from William Shakespeare to Christina Rossetti. Charles Dickens, in particular, had to influence the style and types of Van Gogh's subjects throughout his career. Thus, in the foreground of L'Arlésienne, a portrait he made the last year of his life in 1890 in the south of France, is represented one of his favorite books Dickens.

The exhibition will also recall Van Gogh's passion for British engraving and printmaking. In spite of his great poverty, he hunted and collected more than 2,000 engravings, most of which were taken from English magazines such as The Illustrated London News. "My whole life is about reporting on everyday life as Dickens describes it and how these artists portray it," he wrote during his difficult early years as an artist. In the last months of his life, he was inspired to paint his only image of London taken from an engraving by Gustave Doré, The Prisoners' Walk, at Newgate Prison.

From the obscure years in London to the extraordinary fame that Van Gogh was to acquire in Britain in the 1950s, the exhibition will show how his uncompromising art and life paved the way for modern British artists such as Matthew Smith, Christopher Wood and David Bomberg. The exhibition will close with a large collection of portraits of Francis Bacon executed from a self-portrait of Van Gogh destroyed during the Second World War and of which only photographs remain today. The exhibition will thus aim to offer a new look at Van Gogh's famous works, through the work of British artists whom he has inspired so much. For Francis Bacon, and the British general public in general, Van Gogh embodied the idea of the rebellious and misunderstood artist on the margins of society.

The EY Exhibition: Van Gogh and Great Britain is curated by Carol Jacobi, curator-in-chief of the British Art 1850-1915 Department of Tate Britain, and Chris Stephens, director of the Holburne Museum in Bath in collaboration with Martin Bailey, specialist Van Gogh and Hattie Spires, Assistant Curator, Modern British Art Department, Tate Britain. It will be accompanied by an important catalog edited by Tate Publishing and a program of conferences and events.