‘How I love London’ (Vincent van Gogh, 1875).

Vincent van Gogh spent nearly 3 years in England as a young man, leaving in 1876, enjoying literature by authors such as Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare and George Eliot and art by artists including John Constable, John Everett Millais and James Whistler, while his letters and notebooks record areas of English life he enjoyed such as the ancient churches and the Embankment along the Thames, while he developed a concern for the lives and hardships of ordinary people which is often reflected in his work.

Tate Britain’s exhibition ‘Van Gogh and Britain’ has three strands to it – first the influences of English art, culture and the places he lived on his work; second, the reaction and growing appreciation of his work in Britain as it began to be shown more intensively 20 years after his death in 1890, with the Scottish art dealer Alexander Reid having been an early supporter of his work, and, third, the influence of van Gogh’s work on artists of the time in Britain including Scottish artists Samuel Peploe and George Hunter, who would have seen his work in exhibitions in the UK and on their visits to France.  Scottish artists are often international in outlook, as indeed is Scotland as a nation, which perhaps is why it did not vote for a Brexit which the UK government is trying to force onto it and is likely to result in due course in a vote for independence.

The exhibition is strong in its first part – the influence of English literature, art and the places where van Gogh lived and worked, but then it loses its way.  The contribution of the Glasgow art dealer Alexander Reid, one of his greatest supporters in the UK, is covered very briefly in the description of his portrait by van Gogh, yet he probably did most at the time to support collecting of his work in the UK at the time, along with other Impressionists and the Scottish Colourists.

The third and last part is a little stretched.  Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’ from the National Gallery is here, but then there are several pictures apparently derived from it.  Can it really be true that anyone who decided to paint bright yellow flowers was directly influenced by van Gogh?   The most inspirational are indeed those by the Scottish Colourists Samuel Peploe and George Leslie Hunter, but were they directly influenced by van Gogh or was it a movement of the time, including a greater exposure to Japanese art?

Lastly, we have three powerful works from the 1950′s by Lucien Freud painted in homage to van Gogh, but showing influences from other artists such as Egon Schiele and stylistically part of a journey to what we recognise today as classic Freud paintings.

Astonishingly, the first exhibition in London on Vincent van Gogh since 1947, it was worth seeing for the art, but the thesis about the connections between van Gogh and British artists is a little stretched towards the end.