What the Dickens? Van Gogh at Tate Britain

If you were asked to name the influences on Vincent van Gogh, you'd undoubtedly mention Paul Gauguin, the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, and Japanese woodcuts and prints. But the novels of Charles Dickens and the foggy streets of Victorian London?

Get along to the Van Gogh and Britain exhibition at Tate Britain and you will indeed find that the three years Vincent spent in England from 1873 had a big impact on his taste in art and the style and subject matter of his paintings and drawings, though maybe not quite as much as the curators seem to want you to think. Van Gogh developed those writhing brushstrokes and that hugely expressive use of colour in the south of France, not south of the Thames.

Van Gogh was 20 when he arrived in London to work in an art dealer's office in Covent Garden, where he stayed for two years, crossing the river each day from lodgings in Stockwell and the Oval. He later tried to earn his living from teaching and preaching before leaving England for good.

But the literature he discovered during his stay provided a lifelong interest: He admired Victorian novels for their "reality more real than reality" and wrote that "my whole life is aimed at making the things from everyday life that Dickens describes." Van Gogh reread Dickens's Christmas Books nearly every year, and in the final year of his life -- 1890 -- that collection, translated into French, is one of the two books on the the table in this portrait of his friend Marie Ginoux, L’Arlésienne, in the very first painting in this exhibition.

The other book, by the way, is Uncle Tom's Cabin, the great anti-slavery novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe, and another Van Gogh favourite. 

Van Gogh soaked up paintings in London as well as novels, and they weren't necessarily the sort of paintings you might think of as having a moulding influence on him. George Henry Boughton's God Speed! Pilgrims Setting Out for Canterbury seems to be one of those Victorian cod-historical pieces that line the walls of provincial art galleries. Van Gogh admired the Pre-Raphaelites and never forgot meeting John Everett Millais in the street. He often mentioned Millais's Chill October in his letters. 

At the National Gallery, van Gogh was able to admire landscapes by Dutch Golden Age artists such as Meindert Hobbema.  

And when van Gogh later began to paint himself, he attempted to emulate Hobbema's Avenue at Middelharnis with his own Avenue of Poplars in Autumn. It's the first of several paintings in this show where we see a direct thematic link between work Vincent admired in Britain and pictures he made through his career.

Van Gogh mentioned Whistler many times in his letters and praised his views of the Thames. On display at the Tate is Whistler's Nocturne: Grey and Gold, Westminster Bridge, with a few pin-pricks of light on the bank reflected in the river on what seems a murky London evening. The comparison here is with van Gogh's Starry Night over the River Rhône at Arles, and while you can certainly see a bit of Whistler in the water, there's no way that sky was made in Britain, surely?

Van Gogh was a big, big fan of British prints, the sort that appeared regularly in the illustrated newspaper The Graphic, by artists including Luke Fildes (who also illustrated Dickens), Hubert von Herkomer and Frank Holl -- Victorian household names, though rather less known today. There's an interesting, but perhaps slightly too extensive, section of this exhibition devoted to showing how the self-taught artist van Gogh studied, absorbed and reworked themes and subjects from everyday life by these artists throughout his career.

The Dutchman also collected copies of the prints of London life by French artist Gustave Doré, and in the final year of his life, when he was in a mental hospital in Saint-Rémy, he painted his own version of Doré's view of the exercise yard at Newgate prison. He felt the hospital was like a jail: "The prison was crushing me," he wrote. 

Now, this is an exhibition of two halves: after the British influence on van Gogh, we get his influence on British art, starting with a look back to the 1910 show about Manet and the Post-Impressionists that introduced British audiences to van Gogh 20 years after his death. This was work that was shocking in its modernity and helped to create the artist's reputation for being a madman but a genius.

Van Gogh quickly influenced artists like Vanessa Bell, represented here with a 1912 portrait of the art critic Roger Fry that recreates the Dutchman's use of colour and brushstrokes. Even more indebted to van Gogh was Harold Gilman (currently the subject of a fine exhibition at the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester). Gilman kept a print of a van Gogh self-portrait on his studio wall and, before beginning to paint, would wave his brush towards it, saying "A toi, van Gogh." There's a terrific Gilman, Eating House, that pays homage to the red and green of van Gogh's Night Café.

Of course, people could get a little bit carried away. Spencer Gore depicted Gilman's home in the colour scheme of van Gogh's Yellow House in Arles. Except Gilman lived in suburbia: the garden city of Letchworth in Hertfordshire. Very nice, but not quite sun-kissed Provence....

Provence, where the sunflowers grow in profusion. One of van Gogh's numerous paintings of them was acquired for Britain's national art collection in 1924, and it contributed to a revival of flower painting in this country.

One of the most spectacular responses to it was this vibrant, really in-your-face picture of Sunflowers by Frank Brangwyn -- something we weren't quite expecting.

Or, if you're after an homage by another troubled self-taught artist who ending up committing suicide, try these absolutely charming Yellow Chrysanthemums by Christopher Wood.

This is the first Van Gogh exhibition at the Tate since 1947, when, as you can see towards the end of the show, people queued in the rain to get in at a price of one shilling, or just under £2 in today's terms, adjusted for inflation. It's pretty crowded in there this time round, we can assure you, despite the cost.

If you're expecting this to be a definitive Van Gogh exhibition, you'll be disappointed, though there are about 50 works by him in total. But it is certainly a very interesting show. Scrooge and Marley and Tiny Tim, there with Vincent van Gogh in Arles to the end. Who would have thought it?

Practicalities 

Van Gogh and Britain is on at Tate Britain until August 11 and is open daily from 1000 to 1800. Full-price tickets cost £22 (just over 11 shillings in 1947); they're available online here. The nearest London Underground station is Pimlico on the Victoria Line, about five minutes' walk away.

Images

Vincent van Gogh, L’Arlésienne, 1890, Collection MASP (São Paulo Museum of Art). Photo: João Musa
Meindert Hobbema, The Avenue at Middelharnis, 1689, National Gallery, London. © National Gallery
Vincent van Gogh, Avenue of Poplars in Autumn, 1884, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
Vincent van Gogh, Starry Night, 1888, Musée d'Orsay, Paris. Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée d'Orsay)/Hervé Lewandowski
Vincent van Gogh, The Prison Courtyard, 1890, Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow. © Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts
Vincent van Gogh, Sunflowers, 1888, National Gallery, London. © National Gallery
Frank Brangwyn, Sunflowers, early 20C, lent by Royal Academy of Arts, London. © Estate of Frank Brangwyn/Bridgeman Images
Christopher Wood, Yellow Chrysanthemums, 1925, Mr Benny Higgins & Mrs Sharon Higgins