Van Gogh and the art that made a great impression
HIS vibrant canvases of sunflowers have inspired generations of artists since his death nearly 130 years ago.
Now Vincent Van Gogh’s influence on British artists – as well as Britain’s influence on him – is the subject of Tate Britain’s major new exhibition of his work.
It will feature many of the Dutch postimpressionist’s most important and bestknown works, including Self- Portrait, Starry Night and Sunflowers.
Alongside them will be pieces by artists such as Francis Bacon and Vanessa Bell which were inspired by him.
Bacon’s Study for a Portrait of Van Gogh IV, made in 1957, is a replica of the artist’s The Painter on His Way to Work. Van Gogh’s painting was destroyed by Allied bombing in Germany in 1945.
Depictions of sunflowers by artists such as Matthew Smith, Jacob Epstein and Christopher Woodman, inspired by Van Gogh’s series, feature in the show.
Van Gogh’s only painting of London, titled The Prison Courtyard, 1890, is also on show, having been borrowed from the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow. Made in the last year of his life, it is based on a print he owned of Newgate Prison by Gustave Dore. Van Gogh is thought to have recognised the prison thanks to its presence in four of Charles Dickens’s novels.
Van Gogh lived in Brixton, South London, between 1873 and 1876 as he trained to become an art dealer and was inspired by the city to take up his brush and begin his own career as an artist.
The EY Exhibition: Van Gogh And Britain will run at Tate Britain from tomorrow until August 11.