The National Gallery’s new exhibition includes Van Gogh’s brief foray into Neo-Impressionism – The Art Newspaper

The Nationwide Gallery is tomorrow opening Radical Concord: Helene Kröller-Müller’s Neo-Impressionists (till 8 February 2026), with work by lots of Van Gogh’s Parisian colleagues, notably Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. Van Gogh was impressed by their dot-like approach, as might be seen in his vibrant portray included within the London present, The Sower (June 1888).

The Sower additionally has the excellence of receiving what’s might be seen as a papal blessing. In his first normal viewers on the Vatican in Could, Leo XIV talked about Christ’s Parable of the Sower, referring to Van Gogh’s The Sower.

The Pope identified: “On the centre of the scene, nonetheless, shouldn’t be the sower, who stands to the aspect; as a substitute, the entire portray is dominated by the picture of the solar, maybe to remind us that it’s God who strikes historical past, even when he typically appears absent or distant.” Pope Leo then added that “it’s the solar that warms the clods of earth and makes the seed ripen”, a non secular thought that will surely have resonated with Van Gogh.

Van Gogh, the son of a Dutch Protestant clergyman, was a deeply dedicated Christian in his early 20s. He was then non-denominational and whereas residing in west London in 1876 he as soon as wrote about seeing “a really stunning little Roman Catholic church” (in all probability St John’s in Brentford). A couple of years later he completely deserted organised faith.

The Sower and Neo-Impressionism

Within the Nationwide Gallery’s Neo-Impressionist exhibition The Sower is there to inform a really completely different story, one about creative approach. Van Gogh partly painted the composition by deploying dots and dashes in an nearly pointillist fashion. The thought is that these small marks of pure color ought to mix collectively within the eye of the beholder when seen from a couple of metres away, strengthening their affect.

Vincent found Neo-Impressionism after his arrival in Paris in 1886, when he was staying along with his brother Theo. He met its two main protagonists, Seurat and Signac, and admired their work. For a short while in early 1887 Van Gogh experimented with their dot-like approach. Though he quickly deserted pure Neo-Impressionism, discovering it too inflexible a way, he continued to utilize small dashes of pure color, as in The Sower, which was partly impressed by his Neo-Impressionist colleagues.

The Sower was painted in Arles, in June 1888, 4 months after he had left Paris. The determine of the sower was primarily based on a widely known picture he admired by the mid-Nineteenth century French artist Jean-François Millet. Van Gogh set his sower in a Provençal wheat discipline, beneath a robust setting solar. Within the background is the golden wheat, able to be harvested. Sowing wouldn’t be carried out concurrently harvesting, so the the 2 scenes have come collectively in Van Gogh’s vivid creativeness.

Van Gogh’s portray, with its layers of which means, absolutely refers back to the cycle of nature and of life. It additionally has a non secular side, as Leo XIV appreciated: the sower on the land represents the sower of God’s phrase.

The artist was hardly involved with precisely reflecting the scene by way of color. Simply as he was beginning, Vincent wrote to Theo: “You may sense from the mere nomenclature of the tonalities—that color performs an important function on this composition.” 

Vincent felt intimidated, telling Theo: “I simply wonder if I’ll have the required energy of execution” to finish it. He added: “For such a very long time it’s been my nice need to do a sower, however the wishes I’ve had for a very long time aren’t at all times achieved.”

Van Gogh additionally described the portray to his good friend Emile Bernard: “There are lots of repetitions of yellow within the earth, impartial tones, ensuing from the blending of violet with yellow, however I might hardly give a rattling in regards to the veracity of the colors”.

Many of the composition is taken up with the naked discipline, with the soil made up of brief orange and blue brushstrokes. These are complementary colors, giving a robust vibrant impact.

Across the fringe of The Sower, partly hidden by its current body, is a slim multi-coloured border painted by Van Gogh across the sides of the canvas. It’s tough to see, until you recognize it’s there—and look fastidiously. Comparable painted borders had been launched by Seurat and among the Neo-Impressionists.

In 1889 Vincent recommended to Theo that The Sower can be appropriate for an coming exhibition on the Société des Artistes Indépendants. Though it in the end didn’t go into the present, if it had carried out, it will have been seen alongside Neo-Impressionist works by Seurat and Signac.

Helene Kröller-Müller’s imaginative and prescient

The Nationwide Gallery exhibition includes 58 works, with almost two thirds coming from the Kröller-Müller Museum, which is ready in a nationwide park within the east of the Netherlands (the rest are from all kinds of lenders). Because the present’s title suggests, Radical Concord: Helene Kröller-Müller’s Neo-Impressionists additionally units out to pay homage to the girl who constructed her personal museum which opened to acclaim in 1938.

Helene Kröller-Müller was the primary severe collector to amass an essential group of Neo-Impressionists. It’s now arguably the world’s biggest assortment of Neo-Impressionism. She started in 1912, with a Signac, and a decade later acquired what’s the centrepiece of the Nationwide Gallery’s present, Seurat’s Chahut (1889-90), with its energetic cancan dancers. 

Each of Kröller-Müller’s advisors, Henk Bremmer and Henry van de Velde, had been admirers of Neo-Impressionism and had been themselves artists who painted on this fashion (two of Van de Velde’s pastels are within the London present). Van de Velde, who turned from portray to structure, was later the designer of the Kröller-Müller Museum.

One portray within the exhibition which can be of particular curiosity to Van Gogh aficionados is a portrait of the painter Anna Boch, who’s greatest identified for purchasing the one recognized portray by Van Gogh to be offered throughout his lifetime.

On mortgage from the museum in Springfield, Massachusetts, the portrait of Boch was painted by the Belgian artist Théo van Rysselberghe. Boch herself painted in a Neo-Impressionist fashion, and he or she is represented within the London present by two work, together with an evocative picture of a home at nightfall, Night (1891), which continues to be owned by her household.

Martin Bailey is a number one Van Gogh specialist and particular correspondent for The Artwork Newspaper. He has curated exhibitions on the Barbican Artwork Gallery, Compton Verney/Nationwide Gallery of Scotland and Tate Britain.

Martin has written plenty of bestselling books on Van Gogh’s years in France: The Sunflowers Are Mine: The Story of Van Gogh’s Masterpiece (Frances Lincoln 2013, UK and US), Studio of the South: Van Gogh in Provence (Frances Lincoln 2016, UK and US), Starry Night time: Van Gogh on the Asylum (White Lion Publishing 2018, UK and US) and Van Gogh’s Finale: Auvers and the Artist’s Rise to Fame (Frances Lincoln 2021, UK and US). The Sunflowers are Mine (2024, UK and US) and Van Gogh’s Finale (2024, UK and US) are additionally now accessible in a extra compact paperback format.

His different current books embrace Dwelling with Vincent van Gogh: The Houses & Landscapes that formed the Artist (White Lion Publishing 2019, UK and US), which offers an outline of the artist’s life. The Illustrated Provence Letters of Van Gogh has been reissued (Batsford 2021, UK and US). My Buddy Van Gogh/Emile Bernard offers the primary English translation of Bernard’s writings on Van Gogh (David Zwirner Books 2023, UKand US).

To contact Martin Bailey, please electronic mail vangogh@theartnewspaper.com

Please observe that he doesn’t undertake authentications.

Discover all of Martin’s adventures with Van Gogh right here