Van Gogh’s Sunf lowers virtually all together in one room
Online exhibition is only way we will see them at once, says National Gallery
FOR art lovers, it would be something of a holy grail: five of Van Gogh’s Sunflower paintings exhibited together for the first time.
In more than a century, no curator has managed to assemble them in the same room, with the sometimes fragile works scattered around the world and too important for galleries to lend.
To break that stalemate, and in acknowledgement that the paintings will likely never be united in real life, the National Gallery has announced the next best thing: a “virtual exhibition” on Facebook Live.
The gallery’s deputy director said it would likely be the only opportunity for people to see the paintings together in their lifetime, adding it was “absolutely unbearably exciting”.
The five paintings hang in galleries across three continents, from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Neue Pinakothek in Munich and the Seiji Togo Memorial Sompo Japan Nipponkoa Museum of Art in Tokyo.
On Monday, they will be exhibited on Facebook in live relay, with expert curators giving a 15-minute tour of each work before handing over to the next gallery.
Martin Bailey, a Van Gogh expert, said the paintings had never been seen together since they left the artist’s family.
Van Gogh had been unable to sell any of the Sunflowers during his lifetime, with the paintings passing to his brother Theo after his death and then to Theo’s wife, Jo Bonger.
She in turn sold four of the paintings from 1891 to 1924, keeping one, which is now at the Van Gogh Museum.
Bailey, author of The Sunflowers are Mine: The Story of Van Gogh’s Masterpiece, said: “The five Sunflowers in the Facebook presentation have never been exhibited together – and they never will.
“There are two reasons. First, they are fragile works, and for conservation reasons they either cannot travel at all or are only allowed to in very exceptional circumstances.
“Secondly, they are probably the most popular paintings in all the galleries that own them, so the owning institutions are very reluctant to allow them to leave.”
Susan Foister, deputy director of the National Gallery, said: “To get them all together physically would be pretty challenging and might take quite a long time.
“The fact that you can actually bring them together digitally was a solution that really appealed to us, particularly just now with all the experimenting we’ve started to do with Facebook and virtual reality.”
In addition to the live broadcast, the National Gallery will also host a virtual reality version of the gallery, in which digital visitors can see the five paintings hanging together in one room.
Willem van Gogh, the great-grandson of Theo, is narrating.
The Van Gogh Sunflowers Facebook relay will be broadcast from August 14 at 5.50pm.