Hello and welcome to the van Gogh Exhibition
at the National Gallery im London.
Now, the show is called "Poets and lovers"
and what it contains is 60, yes 60,
of Van Gogh's most famous pictures,
some of which are coming to London for the very first time
and the really interesting thing is
that everything here was painted
in the two short years that van Gogh spent in the south of France.
He arrived in February 1888,
he left after all kinds of tragedies in May 1890
but in those two short years the masterpieces poured out of him.
Leading the way is his view of the yellow house in Arles,
so this was the home that he made for himself
and in this tiny little house
he made most of these paintings that you see around us.
It's interesting picture for all kinds of reasons.
This wonderful golden color is one thing
but if you see that at the back that's the railway line
that's probably the train that he arrived in Arles,
on the train from Paris.
This Café here that's the Night Café in Arles,
that's where he used to go and get drunk and play billiards
so that was right next door to the house
and interestingly you see these lumps in the middle of the road.
You know, what those are.
They're actually road works,
because when Vincent moved into this house
he asked for the gas to be connected up to the house
so that he could work at night.
Gas lighting had just been introduced in Arles.
Vincent made sure that the yellow house was connected to it.
Now, the world which van Gogh lived in Arles
was tiny, really tiny,
To help you visualize it,
I've set up this detailed map of the region.
So, this here that's the big yellow house he lived in on the corner,
and behind it, the railway station with the train coming in.
That's just there.
Next door to it the Night Café,
the scene of many drinking adventures by Vincent.
So, when he went out the front door,
just to the right 50 yards up the road,
that big view of the Starry Nght that's just here
and in front of him was the big park, the Poet's Garden
where all the lovers would stray and meet.
And then, just past the park, just up the road there,
that's the brothel where he used to go with Gauguin
for what they called their "hygienic visits".
Now, all this the whole of van Gogh's world,
pretty much everything you see in this show,
all of that is just a few hundred yards
of just a tiny bit of the world
that produced massive amounts of great art.
His bedroom in Arles.
This isn't actually the first painting he did of that.
This is something he did later,
he did a kind of recreation of it.
Once he'd had his breakdown and things went wrong,
he painted it again.
Now I can't look at this picture without always making a B-line
for this washstand here.
So, in the morning Vincent would wash and shave.
This must be where he kept his razor,
the razor with which notoriously he would later hack away at his own ear.
Why did van Gogh choose Arles as his south of France destination?
It's always puzzled me, I mean,
he could have gone anywhere in the south of France,
to some very glamorous places,
but he chose Arles which at the time was an industrial city.
It had a port full of cold ships, dark smoky
and the only thing Arles was famous for at the time
was the beauty of its women.
The Arlesiennes, as they were called
were supposed to be the most beautiful women in France
and my suspicion, my theory
is that it was this that attracted Vincent most-
He was a man desperately searching for love
and he thought that if he came to Arles
amongst all these famously beautiful arlesiennes
would find the partner he was seeking
and all through the show
there's so much whispering of love going on.
Little couples under the trees,
little couples walking by the river,
little couples in the park.
And that didn't ever happe to Vincent in real life
but it could happen in his art.
I love these Vincent's views of the olive trees near San Rémy
where the asylum was.
There's something about olive trees,
their gnarled shape,
the way that they twist and struggle in the dry earth.
That touched a cord with him
and for me, their kind of self-portraits,
each olive tree representing his own struggle.
I've been looking at van Gogh most of my adult life
and I thought I'd seen a lot
but I hadn't seen that,
I hadn't seen that, I didn't see that.
There's a lot here that no one has seen before.
So, there's all kinds of reasons to come to this exhibition
but one of them is that you'll see a van Gogh
that perhaps will be a bit unfamiliar to you.