Pioneer and his admirers

Swirling clouds echo the twisted hillsides in the noonday scene. The heat builds up and rises from the yellow waving corn, stirring the air above and the dark green leaves of the cypress trees that captivated Van Gogh during the restless year he spent at Saint-Rmy in the south of France (1889-90). It is a turbulent picture and typical of Van Gogh with its bold brush strokes and vigorous vibrant colours, epitomising his work and tumultuous life (1853-90).

A Wheatfield, with Cypresses is a magnificent landscape. It was the first Van Gogh to enter a British public collection and, with three versions in existence and countless reproductions, there can be few who remain unfamiliar with it.

Seen here in the elegant surroundings of Compton Verney, Warwickshire last week named Small Visitor Attraction of the Year as part of a major new exhibition of Van Gogh's work, we see the picture afresh. Set on its own against a brilliant white wall, the evanescent wisps of cloud seem to drift beyond the frame on to the walls of the gallery itself and it is simply stunning.

Van Gogh and Britain: Pioneer Collectors, which runs at Compton Verney until June 18 before travelling to the Dean Gallery, Edinburgh, for the summer, is the largest Van Gogh exhibition to be held in Britain since the 1960s. It is also the first to take a look at Van Gogh's career through the eyes of avant-garde British collectors before the outbreak of the Second World War.

Gathering works from public and private collections the world over, some of which have not been on public display, it identifies those early collectors and how they came to discover Van Gogh and, by so doing, offers us a new way of looking at this extraordinary Dutch artist.

"The accepted wisdom is that the British came late to Van Gogh, that they were among the last to appreciate his revolutionary art," says curator Martin Bailey. Although there is some truth in this, research has revealed that from the start there were far-sighted collectors in Britain. Four had acquired paintings by 1896, just six years after his death.

For example, the oil Two Crabs, striking in its use of complementary reds and greens, was painted by Van Gogh in Arles in 1889 three weeks after he had mutilated his ear. It was the first to be bought by a British collector, purchased in 1893 for £17, a large sum for an as yet unrecognised artist; it sold 13 years later for £8, and must be one of the few to have made a loss at sale.

As these collectors, numbering among them artists, art dealers, playwrights, publishers, professors, MPs, and tycoons in fields from mining to marmalade, were pioneers', so were Van Gogh and his contemporaries.

d=3,2,1In 1910, the London exhibition Manet and the Post-Impressionists introduced Van Gogh to Britain, along with Cezanne, Matisse and Gauguin, amid a storm of controversy. Compton Verney shows cartoons and newspaper articles to remind us how they were received. One art critic demanded: "Are they the maniacs of art, or are they pioneers opening up new avenues of expression and emotion?"

The 30 works on display here include paintings and drawings in a variety of styles and subjects. We follow Van Gogh's stormy ten-year painting career with its prodigious output, through his sombre Dutch period, on to Paris and his association with the Impressionists that took him towards bolder colours and landscapes, and, finally, his later work at Arles, Saint-Rmy and Auvers.

Oleanders is one of the most eye-catching paintings in the show. I found my gaze returning to it again and again, it is so dynamic. The drama contained within the still life's arresting composition and combination of colours pink flowers and green leaves in a majolica jug against a vivid yellow-green background is stunning. On the table are two books, the top one La Joie de vivre by Emile Zola. The picture, painted in August 1888 halfway through a frenzied year of painting at Arles, barely contains its own vitality. Its lucky owner from 1923 was Michael Sadler, Master of University College, Oxford (1923-34), and a serious collector of modern art.

Other highlights include two portraits of the Van Gogh look-alike, Alexander Reid, the Scottish art dealer and friend of the brothers Theo and Vincent; Head of a Peasant Woman painted in the Brabant in 1885; Olive Trees where sky, trees and multicoloured ground seem to merge in a dizzying downward flux; and Head of a Man, a transitional work that shows some effects of contact with the Impressionists.

The only painting sold during his lifetime, Peach Blossom in the Crau (1889), is here too, plus a report of its loan to an Essex village hall in 1935 as part of an Art for the People scheme.

The last room features a selection from Auvers, the village near Paris where Van Gogh spent his final two months. Here are two 1890 paintings that share the same format (double-square): Farms near Auvers and Rain-Auvers. With paint thinner than normal and a similar palette, they make a surprisingly lovely pair, although Martin Bailey thinks they were not intended as such, saying it is probably a coincidence. He was producing one picture a day at the time and created them a few weeks apart.

Rain-Auvers is the view towards the village from the track that leads to the wheatfields and cemetery. Inspired by a Japanese woodcut, Van Gogh painted the rain as streaked diagonal strokes that slash across the soft blue, green and yellow scene. Crows hover in the foreground; often symbols of death, one flies straight at the viewer. It is a very atmospheric work.

It was in these wheatfields that Van Gogh shot himself soon after. For this reason, the two oil paintings are placed next to an etching of Dr Gachet, the physician who attended Van Gogh for two days until he died. The arrangement forms a moving ending to this unusual and delightful exhibition.

Van Gogh and Britain: Pioneer Collectors is at Compton Verney in Warwickshire until June 18 and then at the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh from July 7 to September 24. Paintings by Francis Bacon (1957) inspired by Van Gogh's self-portrait The Painter on the road to Tarascon, are also on show. To coincide with the exhibition, there are talks by eminent speakers: on May 6,Van Gogh's Letters is read by Dutch actor Ruben Brinkman, who played Van Gogh in the play Vincent in Brixton; and on May 18, Modernity, Modernism and the Art of Memory by Prof Griselda Pollock. See Compton Verney's website for other events this summer: www.comptonverney.org.uk