WHAT?  Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers 

WHERE?  The National Gallery,Trafalgar Square, London WC2N 5DN

WHEN?  Now until 19th January 2025

WHY GO?  To feel a connection with the Dutch master.  No prizes for guessing who painted sunflowers time after time?  Van Gogh loved their ‘Christlike’ glowing yellow halos and painted them 11 times in all over his turbulent career as an artist, but never more earnestly than when he was in Provence for two short but madly creative years.  He even hung them as a welcome gift for his pal Gaugin in The Yellow House which they shared before the big ‘falling out’ and gruesome ‘cutting ear’ crisis.

This much lauded exhibition is a show stopper and reveals Van Gogh’s more reflective poetic side and realises his personal wish of creating a triptych by reuniting two of his sunflower paintings with a portrait of Madame Augustine Roulin, friend and wife of the postman in Arles.

He sketched an image of how he imagined these three paintings displayed one day in a letter to his brother Theo on display.  One is the National Gallery’s own, the other is on loan from Philadelphia.

Everything about this troubled artist invites curiosity.  Van Gogh has captured our imagination more than any other artist of that era and inspired us to love his work forever.  

There’s a room devoted to his original drawings, encouraging us to follow his eye headed towards those final bold brush strokes so evocative of every Van Gogh painting.

This glorious exhibition is a rich celebration of The National Gallery’s special 200th Anniversary.

IN THE KNOW  Suffice it to say the gift shop is a treasure trove of VG goodies from the Exhibition Catalogue to the obligatory tote bag, T-shirt and crochet doll, even the fan-girl sunflower earrings.

Should your infatuation extend to Christmas, there are festive decorations of Vincent himself.

With tickets selling super fast, you could instead watch a screening of the exhibition at Picturehouse cinemas from November.