Image: Visitors at Van Gogh Poets and Lovers at the National Gallery Photo (c) The National Gallery, London
The recently closed exhibition was open through the night on its final days to meet unprecedented demand
The National Gallery has closed its Van Gogh exhibition as the most successful ticketed exhibition in its history.
‘Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers’ ran from September 2024 to 19 January 2025, and counted 334,589 visits.
The exhibition was open through the night in its final days, from Friday 17 January to Saturday 18 January, to accommodate demand. A further 19,500 people visited during the this time, equating to one person every 10 seconds and achieving the new record.
The gallery’s last most popular ticketed exhibition was 2011’s ‘Leonardo da Vinci:Painter at the Court of Milan, which counted 323,800 ticketed visits.
With an average of 2,676 visits per day, the exhibition is the seventh most-visited at the National Gallery, including free exhibitions, since 1991.
Explaining its popularity, Director of the National Gallery Sir Gabriele Finaldi said: “Van Gogh has become a talisman for passion, authenticity and commitment to his art.
“The show presents Van Gogh as a very serious painter but his ‘lust for life’, as Irving Stone put it, remains evident and infectious.”
The exhibition had over 60 works and loans from museums and private collections around the world.