The Guardian view on the new Van Gogh show: a chance to fully see Vincent | Editorial

On Saturday the National Gallery in London opens its doors for its new Van Gogh exhibition, remarkably the first in its 200-year history. Exactly 100 years ago, the National purchased Van Gogh’s Sunflowers for £1,304, a bargain even for the times.

Far from a safe bet, guaranteed to bring in the crowds, Van Gogh was considered a rather risky addition in 1924. Slipping under the National Gallery’s 1900 cut-off date – later works go to the Tate – by just a decade, he is a visionary modernist among old masters. His paintings might be the stuff of a million tea towels today, but there is nothing dusty or cosy about Van Gogh.

“ Merde ! Everything is yellow! I don’t know what painting is any longer!” Gauguin wrote in his journal, quoting a fellow painter on his friend’s work. Van Gogh blazed a trail for the Fauves and Expressionists who followed. More recent devotees include Lucian Freud, who said he’d “never seen a bad one”, and David Hockney.

A man who sold only one painting in his lifetime is now one of the most bankable, and popular, artists on the planet. With T-shirts, mugs, jigsaw puzzles and Lego sets everyone can get their hands on a bit of the legend. But nothing can compare to coming face to face with the artist in his 1889 Self-Portrait , or standing in front of his humble wooden bed in The Bedroom or the dazzling Starry Night Over the Rhone . Not to mention those Sunflowers. The previews for Van Gogh: Poets & Lovers have been ecstatic: Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones described the exhibition as “heart-stopping”; others pronounced it “a once-in-a-century starburst” and “breathtaking” .

The exhibition focuses on the two feverishly productive years Van Gogh spent in Arles between February 1888 and May 1890, when he completed 200 paintings and more than 100 drawings and watercolours. He killed himself two months later.

From the 1956 biopic Lust for Life , starring Kirk Douglas, Van Gogh has been portrayed as the poster boy for the tortured artist. His very real mental health struggles, and how he transcended them in paintings that seem alive both with a terrible anguish and joy at the world’s beauty, are part of what make him so relatable. Working just a few years before Edvard Munch painted The Scream, Van Gogh captures the loneliness and insanity of the modern condition. Here is a genius, but a very human one.

The National’s curators have honoured the artist’s wishes in displaying two of his sunflower paintings as a triptych with La Berceuse , meaning “lullaby, or woman who rocks the cradle”, in the middle. Viewed together, he wrote to his brother Theo in 1889, he felt these paintings would be “consoling”. Van Gogh believed art could offer comfort and hope. He wanted to reach out to everyone.

As British museums and galleries attempt to recover pre-pandemic numbers, a crowdpleaser like Van Gogh can only be a good thing. But he isn’t just safe – the National could have gone with another of its treasures, such as Constable. Its free shows this year, in particular the hugely popular The Last Caravaggio , have shown how contemporary, in the sense of universal and alive to us, its older collection is. Now it is showcasing arguably its edgiest asset. In this anniversary year, as the National Gallery looks back and forwards, what better way to celebrate turning 200.

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