Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers (14 September 2024 ‒ 19 January 2025) has just closed with 334,589 visits - making it the most popular ticketed exhibition in the National Gallery’s history.
The figure announced today (Monday 20 January 2025) follows a final weekend of the exhibition’s run in which it was open through the night from Friday 17 January to Saturday 18 January to accommodate unprecedented demand. This was only the second time in the Gallery’s history that this has happened (the first being for Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan in 2012.) 19,582 people visited during the last weekend alone, one person every 10 seconds.
Figures for 'Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers' have overtaken the previous first and second most visited ticketed (or paid) exhibitions - 'Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan' (9 November 2011 ‒ 5 February 2012) which totalled 323,827 and 'Velázquez' (18 October 2006 ‒ 21 January 2007) with 302,520 visits.
Sir Gabriele Finaldi, Director of the National Gallery, London, says: ‘I am delighted that there have been over 330,000 visits to 'Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers'. Van Gogh has become a talisman for passion, authenticity and commitment to his art. The paintings in this exhibition are among his most striking works and have a freshness and immediacy about them. The show presents Van Gogh as a very serious painter but his ‘lust for life’, as Irving Stone put it, remains evident and infectious.’
Over 125 days, with an average of 2,676 visits per day, the exhibition is the seventh most visited at the National Gallery (paid or free) since 1991. Its catalogue has entered the 'Sunday Times' Bestseller list.
'Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers' is the first of the Gallery’s two ticketed exhibitions that celebrate its 200th anniversary. The second Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300‒1350 (8 March ‒ 22 June 2025,) will reunite paintings from museums, churches and private collections around the world by some of the greatest Italian artists of the 14th century. This critically acclaimed exhibition is currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum, New York.
Other ticketed exhibitions this year include José María Velasco: A View of Mexico (29 March ‒ 17 August 2025), the first in the UK devoted to this much-loved 19th-century Mexican artist; and Radical Harmony: Helene Kröller-Müller's Neo-Impressionists (13 September 2025 ‒ 8 February 2026), the Gallery’s first ever exhibition devoted to the Neo-Impressionist art movement. Featuring works by Anna Boch, Jan Toorop, Paul Signac and Georges Seurat, many of the pictures on display in the exhibition are from the collection of Helene Kröller-Müller (1869‒1939), at the Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, the Netherlands.
Among the NG200 celebrations this year will be the re-opening of the Sainsbury Wing on 10 May together with the unveiling of 'C C Land: The Wonder of Art', the Gallery’s most extensive rehang of the collection for several years. A new Learning Centre will open on 3 March, with a new Supporters House, for Members and other supporters, also opening in 2025.
'Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers' was the National Gallery’s first exhibition devoted to Vincent van Gogh (1853‒1890) and was also the first anywhere to focus on the artist’s imaginative transformations. It had over sixty works and loans from museums and private collections around the world.
There is still an opportunity to enjoy the exhibition in cinemas across the UK and Europe in the 90- minute, in-depth film 'Exhibition on Screen: Van Gogh Poets and Lovers'. Directed by David Bickerstaff, the film has close-up photography of the works, and insights from the exhibition’s curators, Cornelia Homburg and Christopher Riopelle, as well as art critic Rachel Campbell-Johnston and artist Lachlan Goudie.
Exhibition supported by
Lead Philanthropic Supporter Kenneth C. Griffin
With additional support from
David and Molly Lowell Borthwick
Adrian Sassoon and Edmund Burke
