Accompanies the exhibition at the National Gallery, London, 14 September 2024–19 January 2025.

Arriving in the south of France in February 1888, Vincent van Gogh spent two years making an original, highly expressive body of work that he hoped would impress his contemporaries back in Paris. He set about creating imaginary characters and scenes that were shaped by his literary, musical and artistic influences but based on the real people he met and places he visited. Friends were cast as the quintessential ‘poet’ or ‘lover’ as part of these artistic transformations.

Van Gogh: Poets & Lovers presents the painter as a deliberate, knowledgeable and ambitious individual who was striving towards an ‘art of the future’. Including new research on Van Gogh’s unique approach to exhibiting, his use of intense colour and the incredible variety of sources that inspired him, it offers significant insights into this celebrated artist’s remarkable work.