The moment well after midnight when one day slides into the next is usually a lonely time, 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 to see Friday into Saturday with some of the last paintings Vincent van Gogh ever made.
“There’s an intrigue,” said Digenis Koumas, a visitor, musing 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 interrupted his circadian rhythms and braved London’s spotty nighttime public transportation options for a final glimpse at “Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers,” which was staying open for an all-nighter in an effort to meet visitor demand before it closed on Sunday. In a statement on Monday, the museum said it had been the most popular ticketed event in its history, with nearly 335,000 visits. Nearly 20,000 of those were on the final weekend.
For many visitors, the van Gogh show was as poignant as it was beautiful. The 61 pieces in the exhibition were all made in the two years before van Gogh died by suicide in 1890 at age 37.
Koumas had already seen the show at least eight times, he said, but he wanted one more look.
“You’re seeing his paintings,” Koumas said, “and you’re seeing him as well.”
Gabriele Finaldi, the National Gallery’s director, said that curators chose to hang the works higher than normal, so that crowds could see them better, anticipating that the show would be popular.
But maybe not this popular. For months, tickets have been sold out. The rooms have been packed four deep, regular visitors said, like subway platforms at rush hour.
For the final weekend, museum officials looked back at how they had handled demand for another standout show, a Leonardo da Vinci exhibition that closed in 2012. That show had about 324,000 visitors, and it closed out with the first all-nighter in the National Gallery’s history.
The van Gogh tickets sold out quickly, too. And so on Friday night, after the rest of the museum closed at 9 p.m., fans lined up for timed slots to enter the exhibition. Many were repeat customers.
“I really wanted to see van Gogh’s paintings again,” said Ekow Davis, 8, sometime after 1 a.m.
He had already seen the show in November. On Friday, he said, he went to bed early after a hamburger and some Lego time, and then his parents woke him around 10:30 p.m. to take him to the National Gallery.
Ekow said he loved the bright colors in some of van Gogh’s most famous paintings. But there was something about a lesser-known piece, a monochromatic rendering of a mountain, that struck him.
“It looks like a place that I honestly want to go to,” he said, adding that he could imagine the sun and the wind.
Two of van Gogh’s famous sunflower paintings, which were surrounded by crowds all night, hung in another room.
One piece came from the National Gallery’s collection. The other was on loan from the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Between them hung a portrait of a woman in a green dress. For many, this wall was the highlight of the show: Van Gogh had envisioned such a triptych in a letter to his brother, Theo.
Perhaps that is why climate activists doused those sunflowers with soup last fall, an hour after other activists were sentenced to jail time for an earlier attack on the National Gallery’s “Sunflowers,” in 2022. (There was no permanent damage to the paintings.)
The mood on Friday and Saturday, by contrast, was serene, even contemplative. Many people took their time with the show.
“Midnight offers more room for reflection and self-exploration,” said Yuan Lee, 20.
Lee said he had loved van Gogh’s paintings for years. He had met up at a bar beforehand with friends, some of whom were there more for an adventure than to see the art.
Hannah Gilbert, 30, and her friend Tilly George, 27, had come for both. The two live just outside of London and drove half an hour to the end station on a subway line to arrive in time for a 1:45 a.m. slot — the earliest one left when they booked.
They would have a long ride back. But they had a lot to see. After gazing into the sky of “Starry Night over the Rhône,” painted in 1888, the two took pictures of each other from the back as they stood in front of the work, fixing their hair between shots.
Just before 4 a.m., Gilbert looked up at “Van Gogh’s Chair,” a painting of an empty seat with the artist’s pipe and tobacco. The piece is like a self-portrait in the negative, a death foretold in his absence.
She loves the painting, she said. She always has. But she did not want to buy a postcard of it.
“As beautiful as it is, I don’t want to put it on my wall because I don’t want to see it every day,” she said. It is just too sad, she added, maybe a little too close.
Gilbert said she had been thinking about how much van Gogh struggled during his lifetime — and wondering how he would react to the crowded late-night show.
“What would his perspective of his success be?” 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, flipped to a new page in her sketchbook. Martin had come to the show many times. On Friday, she had begun sketching around 9 p.m. Only now, she said, did she feel “a bit tired.”
“Every time I’ve been, it’s been incredibly busy,” she said, nodding at the people standing in front of her. “It’s been like that the whole exhibition.”
The crowds had thinned, just a little. This is what she had been waiting for: A chance to draw without peering through a wall of bodies.
“It was really to just hopefully get a bit of time when I could sit a bit easier and draw,” she said.
In front of her, an olive grove twisted. The wind seemed to rustle the leaves, spread across four paintings, all painted in 1889. Maybe it was van Gogh, or maybe early-morning delirium. But for a second, the trees did seem to move.
