Step inside Van Gogh’s London bedroom

In August 1873 Vincent van Gogh, then aged 20, moved right into a room in a terraced home in Brixton. He had arrived in London three months earlier, to work as an assistant at an artwork gallery in Covent Backyard, however his first lodgings proved to be too costly.

Van Gogh’s new landlady at 87 Hackford Highway was Sarah Ursula Loyer, a widow who lived along with her teenage daughter Eugenie. Van Gogh had a room on the highest ground, paying 12 shillings a month—simply over a 3rd of his wage. The three-storey home in Brixton was then within the outer suburbs of south London; 30 years earlier it had been open fields.

It will need to have brought on Van Gogh some amusement that the primary avenue crossing Hackford Highway was then named Holland Road (renamed Caldwell Road within the Thirties). The identify has no Dutch connection; the land had been owned by Lord Holland.

On 13 September 1873 Vincent wrote to his brother Theo: “Oh, how I’d wish to have you ever right here, previous chap, to see my new lodgings… I now have a room, as I’ve lengthy been wishing, with out sloping beams and with out blue wallpaper with a inexperienced border.” Presumably he was referring to a garret room by which he had been dwelling earlier than.

Ursula Loyer ran a small college for younger youngsters on the bottom ground of quantity 87. She and her daughter slept upstairs on the primary ground and Van Gogh would have been on the prime of the home, most likely on the entrance, in a fairly snug room going through the road.

Van Gogh would stroll to work on the Goupil gallery in Southampton Road, within the centre of city, three miles away. A brisk walker, he may do it in just below an hour. On returning dwelling, he would typically cease for a couple of minutes and take out a pencil to sketch. Sadly, none of those early avenue scenes survive.

A decade later Vincent wrote to Theo, after he had determined to develop into an artist: “Once I was in London, how typically I’d stand on the Thames Embankment and draw as I made my method dwelling from Southampton Road within the night, and it appeared horrible. If solely there had been somebody then who had informed me what perspective was, how a lot distress I’d have been spared, how a lot additional alongside I’d be now.”

Vincent additionally sketched when he was again in Brixton. In November 1873 he despatched his dad and mom what his father described as “good drawings of the road and the home the place he lives and of the inside of his room”. In July 1874 he made one other sketch of the Loyers’ home for five-year-old Betsy Tersteeg, the daughter of his earlier gallery boss in The Hague, the place he had additionally labored for the Goupil gallery.

Though Van Gogh’s drawings of Hackford Highway are misplaced, one by one other artist does survive. In 1972, when the small sketch was found with the Loyer descendants, it was accepted as genuine, however the attribution was later rejected by the Van Gogh Museum, on stylistic and method grounds. It’s potential that it was drawn by Samuel Plowman, a fellow lodger and novice artist who additionally lived at quantity 87 within the 1870s.

Initially Van Gogh was pleased on Hackford Highway. In January 1874 he wrote to Theo: “Issues are going nicely for me right here, I’ve a beautiful dwelling and it’s an excellent pleasure for me to watch London and the English lifestyle and the English themselves, and I even have nature and artwork and poetry, and if that isn’t sufficient, what’s?”

As spring got here Vincent loved the again backyard. In April he wrote to Theo: “I’m doing a number of gardening and have sown candy peas, poppies and reseda, now we simply have to attend and see what comes of it.”

He finally stayed on Hackford Highway for a yr, nevertheless it ended badly, apparently due to an unrequited love affair. It’s nonetheless unclear whether or not he fell for 58-year-old Ursula, as a letter by his sister Anna suggests, or extra possible 19-year-old Eugenie. This thriller supplied the fabric for Nicholas Wright’s extremely profitable 2002 play, Vincent in Brixton.

After Vincent’s abrupt departure, his mom wrote: “I’m glad he’s now not there, there have been too many secrets and techniques there and no household like odd folks, however he will certainly have been disenchanted by them and his illusions won’t have been realised—actual life is completely different from what one imagines.” What went on behind the doorways of 87 Hackford Highway nonetheless stays shrouded in thriller.

Seven years later Vincent made a short reference to the thwarted affair: “What sort of love did I’ve in my twentieth yr?… I gave up on a lady and he or she married another person, and I went far-off from her and saved her in my ideas anyway. Deadly.” Eugenie grew to become engaged to Plowman, the opposite lodger, they usually married in 1878.

Thankfully, Van Gogh’s Hackford Highway bed room has survived—and it’s now potential to go to it on excursions. The room, now restored and easily furnished, appears cosy. Beside the mattress is a bookcase, lined with copies of Nineteenth-century books which Van Gogh mentions having fun with in his letters.

Through the Second World Battle the adjoining homes, numbers 89, 91 and 93, had been badly broken by German bombs and had been later demolished. Quantity 87 escaped comparatively unscathed, regardless of some harm to the roof.

Within the late 1940a, when the repairs had been executed, the home was purchased by Arthur and Marjorie Smith, who lived there for greater than 60 years. This was fortuitous for the preservation of the constructing, because it prevented the quite a few renovations that might have occurred had there been a succession of householders. Once I first visited them in 1990 the home had modified little from the austere post-war interval, sustaining a lot of its Victorian character.

It was solely in 1971 that it was found that Van Gogh had as soon as lodged within the Smiths’ home, for the reason that deal with shouldn’t be given within the artist’s surviving correspondence. All that was recognized was the Loyer identify, talked about as soon as in his letters.

Throughout a prolonged postal strike, a postman, Paul Chalcroft, had time on his palms and got down to establish the Loyer residence. The 1871 census data had simply been opened up, a century later, revealing the deal with. Two years after Chalcroft’s discovery a plaque was unveiled on the facade.

Marjorie lived there till 2010. Two years later the home was offered by her son to Jian (James) Wang and Alice Childs. Their daughter Livia, who has an architectural coaching, oversaw the restoration of the constructing.

By this time the constructing had deteriorated badly, notably the higher ground, which suffered from severe roof leaks. Whereas restoration work was underway, a number of home insurance coverage papers in Ursula’s identify had been found hidden away in attic timbers, relationship again from the time that Van Gogh was in residence.

87 Hackford Highway, now correctly restored, hosts artist residencies and exhibitions, run by Livia. This autumn a sequence of particular occasions can be held to mark the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Van Gogh’s arrival (the present, The Dwelling Home, runs 14 September-17 December).

And what of Van Gogh’s later life? After his sudden departure from Hackford Highway in August 1874 he moved half a mile away, nearer the town, to lodgings in Kennington Highway. The next yr Van Gogh was sacked as an artwork supplier, partly due to the awkward method that he handled clients. He then labored for a number of months in England as a trainer in Ramsgate and Isleworth, earlier than returning to mainland Europe and attempting varied professions. It was in 1881 that he lastly made the choice to develop into an artist.