Doctopic: Analysis and Interpretation 27_04 ExhibitionandFilm Robinson Perspectives S0140-6736(19)30865-7

Exhibition and Film How Victorian England inspired Vincent van Gogh and his art

Vincent van Gogh (1853–90) is usually brother and art dealer, Theo: “He usually illustrations of the mid-Victorian period, associated with his native Netherlands sits with his head in his hands, and if such as those showing the despair and or with France, the country where he someone speaks to him, it is as though redemption of Thomas Gradgrind in painted many of his most famous it hurts him, and he gestures for them the novel Hard Times by Charles Dickens, works, and much less often with the UK. to leave him alone.” Van Gogh recovered a favourite book of Van Gogh. In 1882, The latest feature film about him, At and quickly created the painting, just he wrote to a Dutch fellow-artist: Eternity’s Gate, directed by the American before abandoning the asylum for an “My whole life is aimed at making the on canvas oil paint , 1889, Self-Portrait painter and film-maker Julian Schnabel, art-loving commune at Auvers-sur- things from everyday life that Dickens 438mm/National Gallery of Art, Collection of with the American actor Willem Dafoe Oise in the suburbs of Paris, not long describes and these artists draw.” × as a compelling Van Gogh, adds to this before he shot himself in July—or was Moreover, Worn Out was the title of a Vincent van Gogh, 572 Whitney Mr and Mrs John Hay tradition. It dramatises the last 2 years “In June, 1890, at Auvers-sur-Oise, painting by Scottish artist Thomas Faed of the artist’s life in France, including that was known to Van Gogh. And a Van Gogh and Britain under the care of a new physician Tate Britain, London, UK, the rejection of his art in Paris, his failed similar pose featured in an immensely Paul Gachet—a private until Aug 11, 2019 attempt to live with Paul Gauguin in popular wood engraving, Sunday at the https://www.tate.org.uk/whats- Arles, his slicing off his ear, and his practitioner and amateur artist Chelsea Hospital by German-born British on/tate-britain/exhibition/ey- exhibition-van-gogh-and-britain confinement in an asylum—sensitively, sympathetic to modern painter Hubert von Herkomer, which if not always accurately. By contrast, painting—Van Gogh portrayed became an acclaimed painting, The Last the latest exhibition about him, the melancholic Gachet in black Muster, viewed at a Royal Academy Van Gogh and Britain at Tate Britain, and white with extraordinary exhibition in London in 1875 by an is a pioneering project covering the animation and humanity…” appreciative Van Gogh. period from the 1870s to the present Between May, 1873, and December, day, inspired by original scholarship. It accidentally killed by two teenagers 1876, Van Gogh spent many months displays more than 50 of Van Gogh’s playing with a loaded gun, as shown in living and working in Britain, own works; numerous British works the film and following an alternative that he admired according to his own theory about his death published by writings, including socially conscious two Van Gogh biographers in 2011. black-and-white prints of Victorian Indeed, the painting’s origins go life and the landscapes of John Everett back almost to the beginning of Millais and John Constable; and Van Gogh’s career as an artist in 1880, works by British artists influenced by and are connected with Britain. As Van Gogh—for example, Jacob Epstein the exhibition catalogue points out, (Sunflowers, 1933) and Francis Bacon At Eternity’s Gate is “the only instance” (Van Gogh in a Landscape, 1957). among Van Gogh’s fecund output of The film’s title derives from Van Gogh’s paintings—75 works during his final simple, moving oil painting Sorrowing 80 days at Auvers-sur-Oise—“where he Old Man (“At Eternity’s Gate”), which he ‘translated’ one of his own black and completed in the Saint-Paul Asylum white works into colour”. His original at Saint-Rémy in Provence shortly lithograph of the same title, also in the before his death, aged just 37 years. exhibition, was produced in The Hague The painting appears in the exhibition, in 1882. It grew out of his still-earlier but is not shown in the film, rather Dutch watercolour, Worn Out (also on surprisingly. It depicts a seated elderly display), painted in 1881. The fact that man in loose blue garb with his elbows the words “Worn Out” are inscribed in on his knees and his head buried in his English on this watercolour, notes the 650 mm/Collection Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo Museum, 650 mm/Collection Kröller-Müller hands. In a sense it might have been a catalogue, “reflects not only Van Gogh’s × self-portrait. Van Gogh was in a deep ambitions to break into the British depression 2 weeks before starting on market but also his thinking about the work in May, 1890. As the director English art and literature at the time”.

of the hospital, Théophile Peyron, wrote The man’s pose in the watercolour on canvas 810 Oil paint in a letter to Vincent’s devoted younger was a popular one in British book Vincent van Gogh, Sorrowing Old Man (“At Eternity’s Gate”), 1890

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interspersed with periods in France his paintings are so “ugly”, he replies: as opposed to the subjects generally and Netherlands, before he became a “Maybe God made me a painter for favoured by classical and impressionist painter. In 1873–75, he was employed people who aren’t born yet.” painters. by Paris-based art dealers Goupil & Cie During this British period, Van Gogh Famously, Van Gogh himself was at their London office off the Strand, walked marathon distances alone acutely familiar with mental struggle and visited many art collections through the countryside—a habit and poverty, accentuated by the at institutions such as the British that continued when he became persistent failure of his works to sell, Museum and the Dulwich Picture a painter in France, as frequently despite the best efforts of his art dealer Gallery. He walked a lot in London, depicted in the film. He even walked brother. In June, 1890, at Auvers-sur- travelled on the river by boat and on from Ramsgate to central London Oise, under the care of a new physician Curzon Artificial Eye 2019 Artificial Eye Curzon the underground railway, under the via Canterbury, telling Theo in one Paul Gachet—a private practitioner and At Eternity’s Gate powerful influence of black and white of his many celebrated letters: “In amateur artist sympathetic to modern Written and directed by illustrations by Gustave Doré published the morning at half past three the painting—Van Gogh portrayed the Julian Schnabel. Screenwriters Jean-Claude Carrière, in 1871 in London: A Pilgrimage. In 1876, birds began to sing upon seeing the melancholic Gachet in black and white Louise Kugelberg, and Van Gogh gave up art-dealing and tried morning twilight, … In the afternoon with extraordinary animation and Julian Schnabel. teaching children at a school, first in I arrived at Chatham, where, in the humanity (and a spooky resemblance Curzon Artificial Eye, 2019 https://www.curzonartificialeye. Ramsgate then in Isleworth. Finally, distance, past partly flooded, low-lying to Albert Einstein), via his wrinkled com/at-eternitys-gate/ he attempted to become a pastor like meadows, with elms here and there, face, thin wrist, crumpled sleeve, his father, delivering his first sermon one sees the Thames full of ships.” But and bent tobacco pipe. This etching at the Wesleyan Methodist Church it was the working people of Victorian (Van Gogh’s only etching) appears in in Richmond in October—a period of England—and their depiction by the exhibition in an impression from intense religiosity featured in the film British artists, and also by Doré—who the Wellcome Collection. The film, (without mentioning Britain) when affected Van Gogh most. For example, too, responds to Gachet but prefers Van Gogh is interviewed by a priest in a Edwin Buckman’s A London Dustyard, Van Gogh’s colour portrait of him. As quiet cloister of the Saint-Rémy asylum. published in the Illustrated London Van Gogh observes and paints Gachet Asked by the personally sympathetic News in 1873 and acquired as a print in the film, the patient and the doctor but artistically conservative cleric why by Van Gogh, probably encouraged his chat with some intimacy. “I paint graphite drawing, The Dustman, made to stop thinking”, says Van Gogh. after a visit to a dustyard in The Hague “I find joy in sorrow.” He adds: “Illness in 1882. “I often felt low in England”, can sometimes heal us.” Then you he recalled in 1883, “but the Black and don’t need a doctor, remarks Gachet White and Dickens, are things that (played by Mathieu Amalric) with a make up for it all”. The exhibition’s smile. “It’s good to have a doctor as third section, “Black and white: a friend”, replies Van Gogh. Sadly, becoming a painter of the people”, neither Gachet’s friendship nor Theo’s explores Van Gogh’s fascination with devotion could save Vincent. “Ah the expanding British trade in prints well, I risk my life for my own work and art reproductions, then known as and my reason has half-foundered in “black and whites”. When Van Gogh it”, he wrote in a draft he suppressed himself became an artist, he collected of his ultimate letter sent to Theo on more than 2000 prints, including July 23, 1890. The disturbing words many published in The Graphic, a were discovered on his person after his British illustrated newspaper launched fatal wounding. Ever since his death, in 1869, such as The Agricultural despite decades of forensic study, the Labourer by Von Herkomer and fascinating coexistence of Van Gogh’s Sunday Afternoon, 1 P.M., Waiting for mental illness and his astonishing the Public House to Open by Edward creativity remains difficult to explain, Gurden Dalziel. The subject matter and while exerting an extraordinary grip on techniques of these prints liberated our contemporary imagination. his portraiture and self-portraiture up to the very end, by showing him Andrew Robinson the artistic validity of drawing and Andrew Robinson is the author of The Last Man Who

Welcome Collection, Welcome London painting impoverished people, and Knew Everything, a biography of Thomas Young, and an academic study, The Art of Rabindranath Tagore. Vincent van Gogh, Paul Ferdinand Gachet, 1890 their everyday labours and struggles—

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