A little Van Gogh

Anew exhibition will explore Vincent van Gogh’s life in London in the 1870s and how the capital inspired him artistically. Thus his name is added to the long list of foreignborn people who have achieved notable things in association with Britain, including TS Eliot, Hans Holbein the Younger, Henry James, and, regrettably, Karl Marx. Van Gogh was a fan of Charles Dickens and George Eliot – and just as these islands shaped him, so his impact can be found on British artists such as Walter Sickert. He moved to 87 Hackford Road in Brixton in 1873, and in 1973 a small sketch he made of the house that had been in a family’s possession for years was unearthed, drawn, they said by a “lodger” and left to gather tea stains. is precisely why hoarders never throw anything away.