As I sit here besides my flickering candle and begin to write, I am thinking of someone else who wrote by candlelight. Someone who has been in my thoughts recently. This is Vincent Van Gogh, the Dutch artist. When he was in his early twenties, he lived in South London for three years between 1873 and 1876. I have just been to an exhibition called ‘Van Gogh and Britain’ at the Tate Britain gallery. It is about those years when he lived here. It is ironic that the gallery is on Millbank as Vauxhall is opposite it on the other side of the river and Van Gough lived near the Oval and in Stockwell not far from Vauxhall. As my friend Teresa and I stepped out onto Millbank after seeing the exhibition, I could not help thinking that Van Gogh no doubt strolled along this street himself on his frequent walks by the Thames. But he would not have passed the Gallery as the site was a prison then, apparently.

There are numerous facsimiles of his letters home in the exhibition. They are written in his neat handwriting with letters unjoined. I have never seen his handwriting before except his signature ‘Vincent’ at the bottom of his paintings. He would write in Dutch and in English as he was fluent in both. Sometimes there would be little pencil sketches of views of places he had seen on his walks at the top or bottom corner of the letter. The river and the embankment seemed to hold a fascination for him. He wasn’t a professional artist then, but worked in the art trade for a man called Goupil, who was a relative.
In one letter he has copied a poem – ‘To Autumn’ by John Keats – which influenced him. The exhibition is about influences: how those three years in London influenced him (and nurtured him as an artist) and how he influenced other artists (up to the 1950’s). From the paintings and sketches of his own on display there are very definite connections between them and paintings and sketches of British artists that he saw while he was here: notably Constable and Millais.

I was very interested to discover that Van Gogh also greatly admired Dickens. He read ‘A Christmas Carol’ every year and also admired ‘Hard Times’, Dickens’ satire on a Northern Industrial town. He related to Dickens’ portrayals of the lower classes and championing of the poor and his pictures are directly influenced by this in his depictions of labourers and farmers.

He was similarly influenced by prints of the engravings of Gustave Dore, who was famous for his epic pictures of the Bible but also for his scenes of the life of the London Poor. I used several of them for my production of ‘Oliver Twist’ as digital projections for backdrops. One picture by Dore, of the exercise yard at Newgate prison shows prisoners walking in circles in a dismal cramped yard with high walls. It was the direct inspiration for Van Gogh’s own picture of the yard in the asylum at San Remy, where he was an inmate for a while and where he continued to paint. Like the prisoners, the inmates walk around the yard in a repetitive circle.

The prints, known as ‘black and whites’ were sold in his uncle’s art shop and he bought several, which he kept and took back to the Netherlands with him and eventually to Paris and Arles. ‘I often felt low in England but the Black and White and Dickens made up for it all,’ he wrote later.
As I walked around the exhibition, I was reminded of a play I saw in 2003 called ‘Vincent In Brixton’ by Nicholas Wright. It is a fictional account of when he was living in a boarding house in Hackford Road (there is a blue plaque there now). He falls in love with the landlady’s daughter Eugenie (which was apparently true) and later with her mother, a grieving widowed teacher (which is fictional). I remember vividly a long scene where the mother (wonderfully played by Clare Higgins) and Vincent (played by the equally wonderful Dutch actor Jochum Ten Haaf) slowly fall in love. It was one of the most beautifully paced and tender scenes I have ever seen in the theatre as they both realise their feelings for each other and as slowly Ursula comes out of her depression. She encourages him in his art and he leads her out of her grief. Of course he eventually moves on, leaving her more devastated than before. It is the ache of teaching: they always move on.

Vincent’s famous painting of the harbour at Arles, ‘Starry Night’ could be linked to a sketch from his days in London. He frequently made sketches on his walks around the capital and particularly liked walking along the embankment by the river. He also liked prints of views of the Embankment and collected them. There is one in the exhibition by Giuseppe De Nittis depicting Victoria Embankment in 1875. Unlike ‘Starry Night’ it is a morning or afternoon scene. A well dressed man and woman, genteelly perambulate along the riverside away from the artist. They are placed in the centre of the scene.

By contrast, the two figures in Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’ are in the bottom right hand corner of the frame, hardly noticeable and dwarfed by the night sky and the curved river bend and the bright lights of the town. They are an artisan couple, huddled together as they trudge along, weary and middle-aged or perhaps older as their faces are indistinct as is their class. They are not elegantly dressed like the two respectable figures in De Nittis’ print: the man wears an ill-fitting jacket and the woman is enveloped in a woollen shawl. Significantly they are on the other side of the water from the town and trudging through a field or waste land in the gloom. Not for them the well-lit streets. Not for Van Gogh either as his perspective is from the wasteland too. Perhaps his perspective always was.

The stars in the night sky explode like miniature fireworks. The lights of the town are streaks of yellow, golden banners reflected in the deep blue, almost black gloom of the river. The bridge across the river is a shadow and barely visible.

What impressed me was the various shades of deep blue to almost black and the thick brush strokes on the canvas. Just by looking at them I could almost touch them. The uneven surface of the oil painting gleamed in the light of the exhibition room. No reproduction could match this bold texture or the various hues of blue or the dazzling gold of the exploding stars, as was obvious to me when I visited the gift shop at the end of the exhibition and looked at the reproductions there. So why did people take photos of the picture with their phones as I stood absorbing it? How could they capture the painting’s vibrant textures in a flat digital image?

There were several self portraits in the show. Van Gogh’s eyes were characteristically intense and pained with an inner vision. If you didn’t already possess a superficial knowledge of his life, his times of severe depression and mental illness are clear from his uncomfortable stare. There was a kind of arrogance about his suffering saying ‘You cannot understand what I feel.’

In his ‘Self Portrait With a Felt Hat’, his pale drawn face is emphasised by his auburn beard under a black hat. His eyes are brooding and intense, angry almost at our effrontery for snapping with a phone; for trying to capture his essence in a digital image;for looking but not looking at his work; for moving on from picture to picture quickly instead of lingering and absorbing his vision. Vincent said ‘One must find beautiful that which is beautiful.’ How could anyone find beauty in his work by quickly moving from one picture to another or by being more interested in snapping it that spending a little time to look at it, to find the beauty in it for oneself?

Nowhere was this more evident than in one of the last rooms, where the famous ‘Sunflowers’ picture was displayed. Everyone was snapping away: it seemed to me to be almost aggressive, as if everyone was grasping and clutching at the picture: ‘It is famous, I must have it on my phone.’ Instead of being passive for a few minutes and absorbing the glorious exuberance of the yellows. The flowers seem to embrace you in their intense warmth. For the first time I noticed tinges of Vincent’s own auburn hair in the petals. In his depression is this what he longed to be: glorious warm sunshine? Or is that what he was deep down? Are the sunflowers a depiction of his true spirit?

We have become so used to swiping and skimming and scrolling that we cannot be still or rather our eyes cannot be still. How can we appreciate art or beauty unless our eyes can be still? Unless our minds and our spirit can be still?

As I close I am thinking of Vincent’s letters again. Of his neat handwriting with unjoined letters. My handwriting has become virtually undecipherable. I must learn to be still again.

Ave atque vale until the next blog.

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Neilus Aurelius