The moment well after midnight, when one day slides into the next, is usually a lonely moment, observed by security guards and nurses, insomniacs and students cramming for exams. But this weekend, at the National Gallery in London, thousands of people were there together. They had come from Friday to Saturday to see some of the last paintings Vincent van Gogh ever made.
“There is an intrigue,” said Digenis Koumas, a visitor, reflecting on the artist’s appeal. “It’s kind of an enigma, his life. The struggles, the battles he had with himself, with his psyche.
Koumas, like many other art lovers, had disrupted his circadian rhythms and braved London’s unpredictable night-time public transport options to take one last look at “Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers,” which had remained open all day. night in an attempt to meet visitors. question before closing on Sunday. In a statement Monday, the museum said it was the most popular ticketed event in its history, with nearly 335,000 visits. Nearly 20,000 of those were over the past weekend.
For many visitors, the Van Gogh exhibition was as touching as it was beautiful. The 61 pieces on display were all made in the two years preceding van Gogh’s death by suicide in 1890 at the age of 37.
Koumas had already seen the show at least eight times, he said, but wanted to give it another look.
“You’re seeing his paintings,” Koumas said, “and you’re seeing him, too.”
Gabriele Finaldi, director of the National Gallery, said curators chose to hang the works higher than normal so crowds could see them better, anticipating that the exhibition would be popular.
But maybe not that popular. Tickets have been sold out for months. The rooms are packed with four people, regular visitors say, like subway platforms at rush hour.
Over the past weekend, museum officials looked back at how they had handled demand for another exceptional exhibit, a Leonardo da Vinci exhibit that closed in 2012. That exhibit had about 324,000 visitors and ended with the first evening at the National The history of the Gallery.
Tickets for Van Gogh also sold out quickly. And so on Friday evening, after the rest of the museum closed at 9pm, fans lined up for time slots to enter the exhibition. Many were regulars.
“I really wanted to see Van Gogh’s paintings again,” Ekow Davis, 8, said shortly after 1 a.m.
He had already seen the show in November. On Friday, he said, he went to bed early after a burger and some Lego, and then his parents woke him up around 10.30pm to take him to the National Gallery.
Ekow said he loved the vibrant colors of some of van Gogh’s most famous paintings. But there was something about a lesser-known piece, a monochromatic depiction of a mountain, that struck him.
“It seems like a place I honestly want to go,” he said, adding that he could imagine sun and wind.
Two of Van Gogh’s famous sunflower paintings, surrounded by crowds all night, hung in another room.
One piece came from the National Gallery collection. The other was on loan from the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Between them hung a portrait of a woman dressed in green. For many, this wall was the highlight of the exhibition: Van Gogh had imagined such a triptych in a letter to his brother Theo.
Maybe that’s why climate activists doused those sunflowers with soup last fall, an hour after other activists were sentenced to prison for an earlier attack on the National Gallery’s “Sunflowers” in 2022. (There were no permanent damage to paintings).
On Friday and Saturday, however, the atmosphere was serene, even contemplative. Many people dedicated time to the show.
“Midnight offers more space for reflection and self-exploration,” said Yuan Lee, 20.
Lee said he has loved van Gogh’s paintings for years. He had met beforehand at a bar with friends, some of whom were there more for a fling than to see art.
Hannah Gilbert, 30, and her friend Tilly George, 27, had both come. The pair live just outside London and drove half an hour to the final station on a tube line to arrive in time for the 1.45am slot, the earliest left when they booked.
The return journey would be long. But they had a lot to see. After admiring the sky of “Starry Night over the Rhone”, painted in 1888, the two photographed each other from behind while they stood in front of the work, fixing their hair between one shot and another.
Just before 4 a.m., Gilbert looked at “Van Gogh’s Chair,” a painting of an empty seat with the artist’s pipe and tobacco. The work is like a negative self-portrait, a death announced in his absence.
He loves the painting, he said. He always has. But he didn’t want to buy a postcard of it.
“As beautiful as it is, I don’t want to put it on the wall because I don’t want to see it every day,” he said. It’s just too sad, he added, maybe a little too close.
Gilbert said she was thinking about how much Van Gogh struggled during his life – and wondered how he would react to the crowded late-night show.
“What would be your perspective on his success?” Gilbert said, looking around the room. “Like, ‘I was myself and it was worth it,’” she guessed. “’It was enough.’”
As 5 a.m. came and went, Diane Martin, 73, turned to a new page in her sketchbook. Martin had come to the show many times. On Friday she started drawing around 9pm. Only now, she says, did she feel “a little tired”.
“Every time I’ve been there, it’s been incredibly challenging,” she said, nodding at the people standing in front of her. “It was like this throughout the exhibition.”
The crowd had thinned out, just a little. This is what he’s been waiting for: the chance to draw without peering through a wall of bodies.
“It was just hoped that I would have a little bit of time where I could sit down a little easier and draw,” he said.
An olive grove unfolded in front of her. The wind seemed to rustle the leaves, scattered across four paintings, all painted in 1889. Maybe it was Van Gogh, or maybe the morning delirium. But for a second the trees seemed to move.