大象传媒

"Oh, how I'd like to have you here, old chap, to see my new lodgings, which you'll have heard about. I now have a room, as I've long been wishing, without sloping beams and without blue wallpaper with a green border. It's a very diverting household where I am now, in which they run a school for little boys."

[Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo van Gogh, 13 September 1873]

According to his letters, 20 year old Vincent spent a lot of his free time walking around London. He commuted to and from his office near Covent Garden, where he worked as a trainee art dealer for a Dutch firm Goupil & Cie. This was several years before he decided to become an artist in his own right.

With assistance from Oskar Cox Jensen - historian and writer at Newcastle University - we recreate the sounds of van Gogh's evening walk back to his lodgings on Hackford Road, in Stockwell close to Brixton.

The location of the South London house was completely lost to history until the early 1970s when postman and local resident Paul Chalcroft used census records to figure out the former address of Mrs Loyer, the landlady named in van Gogh's letters. Journalist Ken Wilkie was researching a story about Van Gogh at the same time for a Dutch magazine and joined Paul's investigation. From his home in Amsterdam Ken tells us the intriguing story.

Adjacent houses were destroyed during the blitz but the Van Gogh house survived and remained almost unaltered. The three story Georgian house came up for sale in 2012 and it is today a museum and art space open to the public.

Readings by Alexander Tol
Streets seller cries researched and performed by Vivien Ellis
Additional folk songs researched and performed by Amy Hollinrake