FRENCH ARTIST COMMUNITIES TALK 3: VAN GOGH & GAUGUIN

Sat 24 Jan 2026, 11am–12pm

At the Museum and Online

This event takes place in-person at the Museum, and online via Zoom.

Tickets are £8 each. Booking is essential.

Tickets will be available to book soon

With Juliet Heslewood, Author and Art Historian

The third in a series of four talks examining four communities of French artists: The Barbizon school, the Painters of Pont Aven. Van Gogh and Gauguin in Arles, and The Fauves – the ‘Wild Beasts’ of the Mediterranean.

While living in Provence, Van Gogh heard news of Gauguin’s experience of Brittany. He looked forward to creating a similar kind of colony, a ‘studio of the south’ and his letters reveal these hopes and the names of those artists in Paris he felt sure would join him in Arles.

His brother Theo, detecting some urgency in his plan, encouraged Gauguin to join Van Gogh. The two artists lived together for only a few months – often setting off to paint the same views of the town and its surroundings, as well as neighbours.

Their output reveals more of their dissimilarities than any constructive collaboration. The talk will include much quotation from both men’s letters.