Two Van Goghs, never before seen in London, will go on show at the Courtauld this February – The Art Newspaper

Within the months after Van Gogh mutilated his ear, he created simply two work of the hospital in Arles during which he stayed. By a stroke of fine fortune, each had been purchased within the Nineteen Twenties by the Swiss collector Oskar Reinhart, although from totally different sellers. On Reinhart’s loss of life they turned a part of his museum, which has till not too long ago been prohibited from lending.

This restriction has now been modified, and the primary group of loans are coming to London’s Courtauld Gallery for the exhibition Goya to Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Oskar Reinhart Assortment (14 February-26 Might). The museum in Reinhart’s atmospheric villa in Winterthur, simply exterior Zurich, is quickly closed for constructing work and is because of reopen in January 2026. Within the meantime, the work had been out there for the Courtauld present.

The pair of Van Goghs, The Courtyard of the Hospital at Arles and The Ward within the Hospital at Arles, might be among the many present’s highlights. Each had been begun within the second half of April 1889, at a time when the artist was sleeping within the hospital, however allowed to color throughout the day.

This was 4 months after Van Gogh had mutilated his ear, which had precipitated the abrupt departure of his colleague and lodger Paul Gauguin. His bodily wound had healed properly, however he was mentally scarred by the trauma.

Hospital backyard

The Courtyard of the Hospital at Arles (April-Might 1889) depicts a part of the arcaded cloister-like courtyard with its vibrant enclosed backyard. The male sufferers had been housed on the higher stage, on the suitable within the portray, and Van Gogh should have liked to flee from the noisy and crowded ward to benefit from the springtime flowers.

I at all times think about that the person with a hat seated by the sting of the coated terrace (and aside from the opposite sufferers) is Van Gogh himself, maybe planning this very image. When he truly painted it, he went to the opposite facet of the courtyard, the south-east nook, so he might embrace the male terrace and ward. The feminine sufferers had been within the wing to the left within the image.

Vincent gave an in depth description of the portray in a letter to his sister, Wil: “It’s an arcaded gallery like in Arab buildings, whitewashed. In entrance of those galleries an historic backyard with a pond within the center and eight beds of flowers, forget-me-nots, Christmas roses, anemones, buttercups, wallflowers, daisies and many others. And beneath the gallery, orange bushes and oleanders. So it’s a portray chock-full of flowers and springtime greenery. Nevertheless, three black, unhappy tree trunks cross it like snakes, and within the foreground 4 massive unhappy, darkish field bushes.”

The Courtyard of the Hospital at Arles is such a fastidiously composed and exuberant portray that it’s troublesome to consider it was made by somebody who was struggling as he was. Its composition, with three cropped bushes, was impressed by the Japanese prints which Van Gogh so admired. The tree trunks break up the geometry of the flower beds and the 2 wings of the constructing. The goldfish within the central pool add a pleasant contact.

Van Gogh additionally made a drawing of an identical scene, utilizing a thick reed pen. At first look it might seem like the identical view because the portray, however the drawing exhibits the courtyard from a special angle, making the bushes seem much less dominant. Drawn within the first few days of Might 1889, it was a farewell work. The artist left on 8 Might to voluntarily transfer to what was then considered an asylum simply exterior Saint-Rémy-de-Provence.

We will reveal that the portray of the courtyard backyard nearly turned the primary Van Gogh to be acquired by London’s Nationwide Gallery, even earlier than the Sunflowers August 1888) and Van Gogh’s Chair (December 1888) had been purchased within the winter of 1923-24.

Nevertheless, in 1922 The Courtyard of the Hospital at Arles was provided to what was then often known as the Nationwide Gallery Millbank (now Tate) for two,500 guineas (£2,625). This potential acquisition was thought of by the gallery’s trustees in November.

In January 1923 the trustees had been knowledgeable that the Van Gogh had been “offered at the next value”. The personal collector who outmanoeuvred the London gallery was Reinhart, who acquired it by way of the Paris-based artwork commerce agent Alfred Gold in December 1922. The Reinhart archive means that he paid 150,000 francs (£6,000), greater than twice what had been thought of by the Nationwide Gallery.

It was to be greater than a century later that The Courtyard of the Hospital at Arles was lent overseas, to London’s Nationwide Gallery. It went to the exhibition Van Gogh: Poets & Lovers, which closed on 19 January. When the London curators negotiated the mortgage, they’d no concept that they’d nearly purchased the image in 1922.

But when the acquisition had gone forward, then a yr later the Nationwide Gallery trustees may properly have had second ideas about buying the Sunflowers. This turned out to be a discount: Sunflowers was purchased in March 1924 for £1,304, half the worth which had been mooted for the courtyard backyard image. By this time Samuel Courtauld had offered a considerable fund to purchase Impressionist and Publish-Impressionist work for the gallery.

The Courtyard of the Hospital at Arles was already in London for the Nationwide Gallery’s non permanent present Van Gogh: Poets & Lovers. It can now be going into the Courtauld exhibition on 14 February. There it will likely be joined by Reinhart’s different Van Gogh, The Ward within the Hospital at Arles.

The Courtyard of the Hospital at Arles was already in London for the Nationwide Gallery’s non permanent present Van Gogh: Poets & Lovers. It can now be going into the Courtauld exhibition on 14 February. There it will likely be joined by Reinhart’s different Van Gogh, The Ward within the Hospital at Arles.

Hospital Ward

Though Van Gogh described the 2 work as “pendants” (a pair), they might hardly be extra totally different in tone and ambiance. The Ward within the Hospital at Arles exhibits the boys’s ward, the place Van Gogh would have slept (or tried to sleep, in what should have been a loud and uncomfortable surroundings). The claustrophobic 30-metre lengthy ward is dominated by the double row of curtained beds. On the far finish is a distinguished crucifix, marking the doorway to the chapel.

Vincent additionally described this image in the identical letter to his sister: “A really lengthy ward with the rows of beds with white curtains the place a couple of figures of sufferers are shifting. The partitions, the ceiling with the massive beams, every part is white in a lilac white or inexperienced white. Right here and there a window with a pink or vivid inexperienced curtain. The ground tiled with crimson bricks. On the far finish a door surmounted by a crucifix.”

Though the composition was largely completed whereas Van Gogh was on the hospital, six months later he added the range within the foreground and what he described as “a couple of gray or black shapes of sufferers” huddled round it. Vincent admitted to his sister that “it’s annoying to color figures with out fashions”—and these additions from his reminiscence are usually not fully profitable.

Dr Félix Rey, who had handled Van Gogh after the ear incident, claimed 40 years later that the group of sufferers within the image included “a self-portrait of the painter”. If that’s the case, he’s presumably the person with a straw hat who’s studying a newspaper.

The Ward within the Hospital at Arles was purchased in 1925 for 250,000 francs (then £10,000), after having been owned by Elizabeth Workman, the British spouse of a rich shipbroker. The sale exhibits how shortly costs for Van Goghs had been rising within the Nineteen Twenties. On the time evidently Reinhart didn’t realise that he had fortuitously acquired the one two Van Gogh work depicting the Arles hospital.

Hospital to arts centre

The Arles hospital had been transformed from a 1573 orphanage and it continued in operation in its historic constructing till 1986, when a contemporary facility was established on the southern outskirts of the town. A lot of the unique hospital was then transformed right into a cultural centre, with a big library established within the shell of the wing the place the boys’s ward had been positioned.

The area as soon as occupied by the chapel was taken over and transformed for the municipal archives. It’s there that the few 1888-89 municipal paperwork regarding Van Gogh’s keep at the moment are housed, together with a petition signed by dozens of his neighbours arguing that he was harmful and needs to be dispatched to an asylum. 

Some years in the past, I requested to see the unique petition within the archive. It was an eerie expertise to learn the doc simply metres away from the place Van Gogh’s mattress would have stood.

Different Van Gogh information:

The Nationwide Gallery’s Van Gogh: Poets & Lovers (14 September 2024-19 January 2025) closed after receiving 335,000 visits. This was a document for its ticketed exhibitions, simply beating Leonardo da Vinci: Painter on the Court docket of Milan (2011-12). The Nationwide Gallery’s Van Gogh determine compares with 422,000 for Tate Britain’s Van Gogh and Britain (2019) and 411,000 for the Royal Academy of Arts’ The Actual Van Gogh: The Artist and his Letters (2010).Ai Weiwei at London’s Lisson Gallery (7 February–15 March) features a work impressed by Van Gogh’s Wheatfield with Crows (July 1890). Constructed with toy bricks and over three metres extensive, the Chinese language artist has changed the crows with surveillance drones.