Date published: 2006/06/17
The Compton Verney gallery in Warwickshire is just finishing an exhibition about the "Pioneer Collectors" of Van Gogh in Britain. (It now moves to Edinburgh, where it will be at the Dean Gallery from 7 July to 24 September 2006.) Getting to Compton Verney involves driving via pleasant enough back roads you would not otherwise visit. The gallery is located in a typical 18th century mansion (by Robert Adam) on an estate consisting of 120 acres of rolling countryside with grounds and a large lake designed by Capability Brown. The interior of the mansion is in typical gallery style, with few original features left (at least on show).
Being located in the middle of nowhere, you do not get the crush you would have had at an equivalent exhibition in London. Of course on the last weekend, with good weather, it was busier than it would have been earlier on in the exhibition. But even so most people were just showing up and getting tickets for almost immediate entry. And unlike London mega-exhibitions, where entry is usually timed to 10 minutes these days, here they gave you a window of an hour. And people were not stacked three deep trying to see the paintings.
There were fewer than three dozen works of art in the exhibition, but even so, with Van Gogh you cannot really go wrong. As well as showing works of art, the exhibition also documented the history of the few British collectors who bought (and sold) the works. You have to pity the descendents of the people who sold works by Van Gogh before he became the world's favourite painter. Talk about losing out both on an investment and on great art.
The main point of going to these kinds of exhibitions is to see work one might not otherwise ever get to see. Most of the works on display are in British museums, but there was a wonderful head of a man now in a museum in Melbourne, Australia, and a few other paintings from American museums.
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