WEBVTT

00:00:07.242 --> 00:00:10.022
Hello and welcome
to the van Gogh Exhibition

00:00:10.022 --> 00:00:12.422
at the National Gallery im London.

00:00:12.442 --> 00:00:15.367
Now, the show is called 
"Poets and lovers"

00:00:15.427 --> 00:00:19.111
and what it contains is 60, yes 60,

00:00:19.164 --> 00:00:21.727
of Van Gogh's most famous pictures,

00:00:21.747 --> 00:00:24.574
some of which are coming 
to London for the very first time

00:00:24.574 --> 00:00:26.431
and the really interesting thing is

00:00:26.491 --> 00:00:29.381
that everything here was painted

00:00:29.401 --> 00:00:34.281
in the two short years that van Gogh
spent in the south of France.

00:00:34.371 --> 00:00:37.203
He arrived in February 1888,

00:00:37.221 --> 00:00:41.508
he left after all kinds of tragedies
in May 1890

00:00:41.606 --> 00:00:47.215
but in those two short years 
the masterpieces poured out of him.

00:01:00.742 --> 00:01:04.979
Leading the way is his view
of the yellow house in Arles,

00:01:05.031 --> 00:01:07.870
so this was the home
that he made for himself

00:01:07.910 --> 00:01:09.939
and in this tiny little house

00:01:09.979 --> 00:01:13.229
he made most of these paintings
that you see around us.

00:01:13.309 --> 00:01:16.213
It's interesting picture 
for all kinds of reasons.

00:01:16.307 --> 00:01:18.475
This wonderful golden color is one thing

00:01:18.497 --> 00:01:21.557
but if you see that at the back
that's the railway line

00:01:21.587 --> 00:01:25.296
that's probably the train 
that he arrived in Arles,

00:01:25.296 --> 00:01:27.090
on the train from Paris.

NOTE Paragraph

00:01:27.360 --> 00:01:29.967
This Café here 
that's the Night Café in Arles,

00:01:30.008 --> 00:01:33.137
that's where he used to go 
and get drunk and play billiards

00:01:33.137 --> 00:01:35.262
so that was right next door to the house

00:01:35.272 --> 00:01:38.822
and interestingly you see these lumps
in the middle of the road.

00:01:39.354 --> 00:01:41.194
You know, what those are.

00:01:41.259 --> 00:01:42.631
They're actually road works,

00:01:42.651 --> 00:01:45.102
because when Vincent moved
into this house

00:01:45.162 --> 00:01:48.493
he asked for the gas to be connected up 
to the house

00:01:48.503 --> 00:01:50.618
so that he could work at night.

00:01:50.668 --> 00:01:52.991
Gas lighting had just been
introduced in Arles.

00:01:53.331 --> 00:01:57.304
Vincent made sure that the yellow house 
was connected to it.

00:01:59.424 --> 00:02:02.153
Now, the world which 
van Gogh lived in Arles

NOTE Paragraph

00:02:02.153 --> 00:02:04.302
was tiny, really tiny,

00:02:04.382 --> 00:02:06.036
To help you visualize it,

00:02:06.066 --> 00:02:09.983
I've set up this detailed map
of the region.

00:02:10.033 --> 00:02:14.711
So, this here that's the big yellow house
he lived in on the corner,

00:02:14.742 --> 00:02:18.165
and behind it, the railway station
with the train coming in.

00:02:18.231 --> 00:02:19.501
That's just there.

00:02:19.531 --> 00:02:21.536
Next door to it the Night Café,

00:02:21.546 --> 00:02:24.218
the scene of many drinking
adventures by Vincent.

00:02:24.318 --> 00:02:26.984
So, when he went out the front door,

00:02:26.984 --> 00:02:29.650
just to the right 50 yards up the road,

00:02:29.650 --> 00:02:33.400
that big view of the Starry Nght
that's just here

00:02:33.420 --> 00:02:37.493
and in front of him was the big park,
the Poet's Garden

00:02:37.526 --> 00:02:39.909
where all the lovers
would stray and meet.

00:02:40.199 --> 00:02:43.596
And then, just past the park,
just up the road there,

00:02:43.736 --> 00:02:47.047
that's the brothel where he used
to go with Gauguin

00:02:47.190 --> 00:02:50.006
for what they called 
their "hygienic visits".

00:02:50.026 --> 00:02:52.799
Now, all this the whole 
of van Gogh's world,

00:02:52.799 --> 00:02:55.044
pretty much everything
you see in this show,

00:02:55.054 --> 00:02:58.556
all of that is just a few hundred yards

00:02:58.706 --> 00:03:02.208
of just a tiny bit of the world

00:03:02.267 --> 00:03:05.209
that produced massive amounts
of great art.

00:03:11.889 --> 00:03:13.107
His bedroom in Arles.

00:03:13.120 --> 00:03:15.875
This isn't actually the first painting 
he did of that.

00:03:15.905 --> 00:03:17.418
This is something he did later,

00:03:17.418 --> 00:03:19.034
he did a kind of recreation of it.

00:03:19.054 --> 00:03:21.512
Once he'd had his breakdown
and things went wrong,

00:03:21.532 --> 00:03:23.326
he painted it again.

00:03:23.466 --> 00:03:26.983
Now I can't look at this picture
without always making a B-line

00:03:28.322 --> 00:03:30.485
for this washstand here.

00:03:31.105 --> 00:03:33.422
So, in the morning
Vincent would wash and shave.

00:03:33.472 --> 00:03:35.970
This must be
where he kept his razor,

00:03:36.510 --> 00:03:41.732
the razor with which notoriously
he would later hack away at his own ear.

00:03:48.619 --> 00:03:53.824
Why did van Gogh choose Arles 
as his south of France destination?

00:03:54.040 --> 00:03:56.295
It's always puzzled me, I mean,

00:03:56.315 --> 00:03:58.732
he could have gone anywhere
in the south of France,

00:03:58.732 --> 00:04:00.256
to some very glamorous places,

00:04:00.296 --> 00:04:04.014
but he chose Arles
which at the time was an industrial city.

00:04:04.050 --> 00:04:07.932
It had a port full of cold ships,
dark smoky

00:04:08.770 --> 00:04:12.001
and the only thing Arles was famous for
at the time

00:04:12.056 --> 00:04:14.548
was the beauty of its women.

00:04:14.599 --> 00:04:16.872
The Arlesiennes, as they were called

00:04:16.872 --> 00:04:19.886
were supposed to be the most beautiful
women in France

00:04:20.676 --> 00:04:24.021
and my suspicion, my theory

00:04:24.318 --> 00:04:27.536
is that it was this that attracted 
Vincent most-

00:04:27.706 --> 00:04:30.654
He was a man desperately
searching for love

00:04:30.695 --> 00:04:32.979
and he thought that if he came to Arles

00:04:32.989 --> 00:04:35.877
amongst all these famously
beautiful arlesiennes

00:04:35.956 --> 00:04:38.820
would find the partner he was seeking

00:04:38.840 --> 00:04:40.655
and all through the show

00:04:40.695 --> 00:04:43.880
there's so much whispering 
of love going on.

00:04:44.010 --> 00:04:46.105
Little couples under the trees,

00:04:46.155 --> 00:04:48.527
little couples walking by the river,

00:04:48.577 --> 00:04:50.758
little couples in the park.

00:04:50.868 --> 00:04:53.720
And that didn't ever happe
to Vincent in real life

00:04:53.760 --> 00:04:56.408
but it could happen in his art.

00:04:58.678 --> 00:05:03.613
I love these Vincent's views 
of the olive trees near San Rémy

00:05:03.653 --> 00:05:05.523
where the asylum was.

00:05:05.553 --> 00:05:07.682
There's something about olive trees,

00:05:07.712 --> 00:05:09.356
their gnarled shape,

00:05:09.356 --> 00:05:13.569
the way that they twist and struggle
in the dry earth.

00:05:14.042 --> 00:05:16.025
That touched a cord with him

00:05:16.072 --> 00:05:19.177
and for me, their kind of self-portraits,

00:05:19.177 --> 00:05:21.627
each olive tree representing
his own struggle.

00:05:23.397 --> 00:05:25.981
I've been looking at van Gogh
most of my adult life

00:05:25.981 --> 00:05:27.533
and I thought I'd seen a lot

00:05:27.553 --> 00:05:28.859
but I hadn't seen that,

00:05:28.869 --> 00:05:30.692
I hadn't seen that,
I didn't see that.

00:05:30.722 --> 00:05:32.938
There's a lot here
that no one has seen before.

00:05:32.978 --> 00:05:35.781
So, there's all kinds of reasons 
to come to this exhibition

00:05:35.801 --> 00:05:38.802
but one of them 
is that you'll see a van Gogh

00:05:38.864 --> 00:05:41.686
that perhaps will be
a bit unfamiliar to you.