Two Vincent van Gogh paintings created in the months after the Dutch artist mutilated his ear will be exhibited in London for the first time.
The works, The Courtyard of the Hospital at Arles and The Ward in the Hospital at Arles, would appear at the Courtauld Gallery from next month, the Art Newspaper reported.
The paintings are the only works created by the post-impressionist of the hospital in Arles in southern France in which he stayed.
The pieces were bought in the 1920s by the Swiss collector Oskar Reinhart and upon his death became part of his 200-strong collection in Winterthur, near Zurich, which until recently had been prohibited from lending.
The museum in Reinhart’s villa, Am Römerholz, opened to the public in 1970 but is temporarily closed for building work, so the paintings are to go out on loan to the Courtauld for the exhibition Goya to Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Oskar Reinhart Collection from 14 February to 26 May.
The pair of Van Goghs were started in the second half of April 1889, at a time when the artist was sleeping in the hospital but allowed to paint during the day.
The exhibition will open with a selection of major paintings by artists who preceded the impressionists, including Goya’s highly charged Still Life With Three Salmon Steaks, Géricault’s moving A Man Suffering from Delusions of Military Rank and Courbet’s provocative The Hammock.
Last year, the Courtauld narrowly escaped a fire in the wider Somerset House complex in central London.
The gallery, home to works including Van Gogh’s 1889 self-portrait showing him with a bandaged ear, was not directly impacted by the fire and was able to reopen shortly after the blaze was brought under control.
