'Van Gogh and Britain' at Tate Britain

The new blockbuster at Tate Britain is 'Van Gogh and Britain' and, as you'd expect, it gets very crowded but is definitely worth it. It's quite a large exhibition with around 50 paintings and drawings by Vincent with lots of others from artists in Britain he's influenced, such as Vanessa Bell, Bomberg, Epstein, Augustus John and many others.

Vincent lived in London for a few years and this exhibition aims to show how he was influenced by British culture and how he influenced British artists. So we see how he admired Charles Dickens and Constable and Millais, and then how he, in turn, influenced others following exhibitions of his works. We see paintings that he mentions in letters that have particularly inspired him in some way and see prints of paintings and engravings that he collected himself. All in all it's a fascinating exhibition and I will go again but, on this first visit, it was to see his works and what a glory they are.

It never ceases to amaze me how naive I can be about artists, how I know what their works look like and they always have done. And that is totally wrong. We're all on a journey and so are the artists we admire. Vincent didn't start off painting in glorious colours, he started trying to find his own path, his own style, his own way of painting that felt right to him. Some of his early works in this exhibition show him drawing and painting lone figures walking through an avenue of autumnal trees, rather melancholy and so not the Van Gogh we've grown to love. One of my favourites of his early works was an incredibly detailed view of an urban back yard - how on earth is it by Vincent Van Gogh? But it is. It's called 'Carpenter's Yard and Laundry' in the Hague in late May 1882. Artists evolve, few spring fully formed from the head of a god.

A drawing that I instantly recognised was 'Sorrow' that Vincent did in graphite and ink. I did a copy of this drawing in ink back in 1977 for my 'A' level art course and it unleashed a flood of memories when I saw it - suddenly I was 17 again. A seamstress model who needed the money, so much sorrow and hopelessness in that pose and, of course, Vincent found it.

He was looking for the ordinary, the everyday, and, sadly, a lot of what he was looking for involved poverty and hardship. He was a nice middle class lad himself - how could he be an international seller of art otherwise? - but he chose to look at and depict ordinary life for most of us.

We start seeing the Van Gogh we know and love with 'Starry Night' where we see the celestial night sky contrast with the articial lights along the waterfront at Arles. It's easy to see the brush-strokes in the thick oil paint , the gentle dabs of paint to show reflections in the rippling water and the rough characters in the foreground that help to give depth to the painting. You can almost feel the confidence of someone who knows what he wants to do and how he wants to paint - no-one had painted like this before but there's no hesitation in this painting. 

A painting I was really attracated to (and which I hadn't seen before) was 'Hospital at Saint Remy' from 1989, a year before he died. The hospital is very much in the background, what he's painting are the writhing trees in front of the hospital. Van Gogh painted a lot of trees - there's probably a book about it somewhere - and sometimes they seem tortured and sometimes joyful. There are lots of trees in this exhibition, including the painting of gorgeous olive trees on loan from the National Gallery of Scotland.

I'm not sure why, but I think these trees are my favourites in this exhibition. They're not tortured or ailing, as you might think for a scene of a hospital, these are vigorous and growing, reaching up to the sky, possibly reflecting how Vincent was feeling after his recuperation there? The red earth, the green leaves and blue sky make such a powerful statement that this painting attracted me from across the room to go and look at it.

Another painting I liked was what I think of as 'smart Vincent', a self-portrait from 1887. He's showing himself in a suit and tie for a change, rather the usual workaday clothes in other self-portraits. I suppose when most of us think about Van Gogh we think of poverty, ears and dying in obscurity and this self-portrait is the very opposite of that. He looks healthy, he's smart, there's still a little wildness to the eyes and hair but he is an artist after all. He knows what he's doing and where he's going with this painting. All of us can have moments of confidence in our otherwise drab and ordinary lives, moments when we're special, and this is Vincent's moment.

The sign beside the painting noted that this was in the first Van Gogh exhibition in this country in 1923 and it was the cover of the catalogue for the exhibition. It also noted that the Tate tried to buy it for the national collection but failed.

This is a very interesting exhibition, with a whole range of things from copies of books by Dickens and others to paintings that influenced Vincent and to paintings by later British artists that were influenced by him. And, of course, a grand selection of works by Vincent himself. It's well worth seeing. I'll be going again.