Cathy's Art Diary

Delightful lecture at the National Gallery on Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” painting. This was the first of a series of member talks based on a new set of books on individual paintings in the gallery to mark its 200th anniversary. In this event Aliki Braine interviewed the art critic Martin Gayford about his work on this painting. The started by asking why he chose this work and he described how, when writing a book on Van Gogh and the Yellow House, he had come to the gallery and sat with the paintings from that period including this one. They discussed how Van Gogh had journeyed south to find new light to paint and how sunflowers may have symbolised this to him. They also talked about how this series of paintings were received by Gaugin for whom they’d been painted for his arrival at the Yellow House and what the hang of them might have looked like. Finally they looked at how the work has been viewed since and why it has come to symbolise the artist to many viewers. This was my f...

Fascinating discussion at the National Gallery about the current Sunflowers exhibition with   Christopher Riopelle, one of the curators of the exhibition, Ashock Roy,   Head of Collections at the National Gallery and formerly head of its scientific unit and Ella Hendriks,   Head of Conservation at Van Gogh Museum. They not only looked at why the pictures were made but also showed recent analysis of the composition and pigments. I was fascinated by the section on pigments as you could easily think the works were just yellow with a few other bits but the variety of yellow was fascinating as well as thinking about how different colours work together. A really interesting evening listening to three experts.

Lovely display at the National Gallery bringing together their version of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers and the Amsterdam version which is a copy by Van Gogh. It was wonderful to see these works together and compare them. I had done a super workshop at the National Gallery a couple of weeks ago looking at how and why they were painted and I did find that brought much more understand to the show. It is a small show and likely to get busy so the information boards had been kept to a minimum but what there was was good and it was clever to bring you out into the room with the other Van Gogh’s in rather than trying to group them together in one space. I thought the London version had a more luminous quality with the paler background and the use of the blue paint to edge the table and the vase. It had a feel of work being thought through whereas the Amsterdam version was slightly looser in style. Don’t be put off by the queuing, I only waited about 20 minutes, but I’m glad I wait...

Excellent morning’s workshop at the National Gallery looking in detail at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers with Gill Hart. We started by looking at how the picture was painted for Gaugin’s room at the Yellow House and then at how it was painted, taking a close look at the surface of the working and thinking about its composition. We then moved into the galleries to look at other works from the same period but particularly the picture of the chair. We discussed how it loo had a simple composition and many of the same techniques. Unfortunately we couldn’t look at Sunflowers itself because the current exhibition is so busy. After coffee we talked about the role sunflowers played in Van Gogh’s work and how they appear in pictures throughout his career. And finally we looked at why Van Gogh made copies of two of his sunflower pictures and why is it so interesting to see the London version and the Amsterdam copy together. All in all a fascinating morning and I can’t wait to do th...