Running since last September and continuing until January 19th, the National Gallery in London is staging an exhibition of the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh. The theme is the last two years of Van Gogh’s life and how he painted portraits and scenes to show the infinite behind the mundane.
One painting that captured me was painting of a small path and the side of one of the buildings of the asylum in which he was at the time, It was easy to put oneself into the picture and stand in that scene.
When you have read this article assiduously and thoroughly, click on the image above and then click again and you will see a big version of it., Scroll so that the frame at the bottom is just out of view and then look at the scene.
The exhibition also marks 100 years since the Gallery acquired the paintings ‘Sunflowers’ and ‘Van Gogh’s Chair’.
The title and theme were a bit of a stretch and the paintings didn’t capture me except for a handful. And marking 100 years since acquiring a couple of paintings was also a stretch.
Part of the problem in appreciating the paintings was the many people in the gallery. That’s the danger of popularity and the holiday season colliding.
And the quill pen landscapes in a side room interested me. The perspective and accuracy were completely ‘accurate’ as in rendered by a draughtsman with an eye and hand able to put the scene on paper.
And that is such a contrast to the mixed perspective Van Gogh used in his paintings. It suggests to me that Van Gogh’s decisions were more conscious than I had thought. We know that he was influenced by Cezenne and by Japanese art of the Ukiyo-e period with its flat perpective. But I hadn’t seen the pen landscapes ‘in the flesh’ before so I had not seen his ‘normal’ vision before.
As usual my thoughts are on who I can photograph in a gallery. These two women were talking their way around the paintings and I wondered whether they were sisters. When they turned Tamara and I thought not, just two friends with similar white hair.
The last photo here is a woman who was ever so slightly built, as Tamara pointed out. She was very boldly and stylishly dressed and when she turned we were not surprised to see she was Asian.
And always the people, lots of people – of which Tamara and I were two.
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