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Art Gallery: Exhibits from The Real Van Gogh | reviews, news & interviews

Art Gallery: Exhibits from The Real Van Gogh

Art Gallery: Exhibits from The Real Van Gogh

Meet the real Vincent in this long-awaited blockbuster

Van Gogh: 'Cypresses', June 1889 (oil on canvas)Photo © 2009. Digital Image/The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource/Scala

This Saturday The Real Van Gogh: The Artist and His Letters opens at the Royal Academy of Arts - it is reviewed by Fisun Güner elsewhere. Organised in collaboration with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, it is the first major exhibition of Van Gogh's work in this country for 40 years.

In anticipation, theartsdesk here offers a gallery of exhibits, not only of celebrated canvases but also of letters scribbled by the artist to his brother Theo, with sketches thrown in.
This Saturday The Real Van Gogh: The Artist and His Letters opens at the Royal Academy of Arts - it is reviewed by Fisun Güner elsewhere. Organised in collaboration with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, it is the first major exhibition of Van Gogh's work in this country for 40 years. In anticipation, theartsdesk here offers a gallery of exhibits, not only of celebrated canvases but also of letters scribbled by the artist to his brother Theo, with sketches thrown in.

[bg|/ART/Fisun_Guner/Van_Gogh]

  1. Letter with Sketch: Sower with Setting Sun, c. 25 Nov 1888 (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam - Vincent van Gogh Foundation)
  2. The Sower, November 1888 (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam - Vincent van Gogh Foundation)
  3. Pollard Willow, July 1882. Watercolour, gouache, pen and black ink on paper laid down on board (Private Collection. Photo © Christie's Images Limited 2007)
  4. Letter 252 from Vincent Van Gogh to Theo Van Gogh, The Hague, Monday 31 July 1882 and Pollard Willow, Letter sketch, paper (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam - Vincent Van Gogh Foundation)
  5. Self-portrait as an Artist, January 1888. Oil on canvas (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam - Vincent Van Gogh Foundation)
  6. View of Arles with Irises in the Foreground, May 1888. Oil on canvas (V an Gogh Museum, Amsterdam - Vincent Van Gogh Foundation)
  7. Letter 783 from Vincent Van Gogh to Theo Van Gogh, Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Tuesday 25 June 1889 and Cypresses. Letter sketch, paper. (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam - Vincent Van Gogh Foundation)
  8. Hospital at Saint Rémy (Trees in Front of the Entrance to the Asylum), 1889. Oil on canvas (The Armand Hammer Collection, gift of the Armand Hammer Foundation. Hammer Museum, Los Angeles)
  9. The Postman Joseph Roulin, August 1888. Oil on canvas (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 35.1982. Gift of Robert Treat Paine. Photograph © 2009 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
  10. Weaver, March 1884. Oil on canvas (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Tompkins Collection - Arthur Gordon Tompkins Fund. Photograph © 2009 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

The Real Van Gogh: The Artist and His Letters is at the Royal Academy of Arts from 23 January to 18 April. The exhibition is organised by the Royal Academy of Arts in collaboration with the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. Book tickets online.

What else can one do, thinking of all the things whose reason one doesn’t understand, but gaze upon the wheatfields. Their story is ours, for we live on bread.

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