The Stockwell of Vincent van Gogh
Colours changing hue
Vincent van Gogh is just about the world’s favourite artist. His art created in Paris and Arles - once he had discovered a stunning palette of colour - is legendary. But we are also sympathetic to his mental struggles; the fact he sold no paintings during his lifetime and hence did not know of his own legacy; his poignant letters to his brother; his frequent changes of career; even his falling out with the fellow artist Paul Gauguin.
Long before Vincent finally found his calling, he lived in London for a year and in particular, Stockwell.
While it was always known that Van Gogh had lived in south London, the precise address was undetermined. The link of 87 Hackford Road, SW9 to Van Gogh was only discovered in 1971 by postman and avid art enthusiast Paul Chalcroft, who took it upon himself to locate Van Gogh s London home whilst he was otherwise idle during a postal strike.
If you fancy an amble to see his lodgings, it’s best to arrive at Stockwell station, cross Clapham Road and head northeast towards the Oval. Second right is Durand Gardens (which is a lovely road) and then second left is Hackford Road. Soon you’re at number 87 which is the only purple marker on the map above.
Vincent arrived in 1873 but first let’s take a look at Stockwell from earlier in the nineteenth century. Later on in this post we’ll concentrate on Van Gogh’s London story.
Above is the Greenwood map dating from the beginning of the 1830s on the same footprint as the first modern map. We see the area on the cusp of development. Two main roads are marked in a dull yellow - Clapham Road is the diagonal one whereas Brixton Road runs north-south. Both roads - but particularly the latter - are attracting typical nineteenth century ribbon development consisting of large houses, many with names. The wealthy are taking advantage of the arterial roads and their links to central London. While public transport will follow in due course to make the commute even easier, most will walk into town from their houses.
The triangle of land on Clapham Road is the remnant of South Lambeth Common, also known as Stockwell Common. Landowners have largely enclosed the local agricultural land and farms such as Paradise Farm, shown on the above map and situated at the bottom of South Lambeth Road, have been established.
Suburbia is arriving too and a road between the two main roads is marked as St Ann’s New Road. This is the future Hackford Road and the position of the house that Vincent will occupy is already marked on the map. It is on the northeast corner of the junction with a road leading to Brixton Road (not marked with a name on this map).
The Van Gogh house overlooked a nursery on the other side of the road. This nursery would remain in the area and mostly unbuilt upon (though hemmed in by housing) until 1911 when it finally succumbed as the final piece of agricultural land in Stockwell.
Road names were very confusing for a while. The northernmost section of St Ann’s (New) Road in 1829 was named Holland Street. There’s another Holland Street leading east off St Ann’s Road.
If postmen/postwomen had been a thing in 1829, two separate Holland Streets would have confused them no end. But the Penny Post arrived only in 1840 so multiple same-name roads weren’t yet an issue. On the map snippet there’s a Holland Arms and a Holland Chapel too and so Vincent van Gogh had plenty of names to remind him of his homeland.
With the following map we’ll move forward in time only 25 years into a time of railways and omnibuses, and the difference is stark.
Better transport links have meant that people can move further out of London and live in nice houses. South Lambeth to the left of Clapham Road is showing this trend.
In 1802, the Manor of Stockwell was sold and, with the following generation, the owning family’s thoughts turned from agriculture to building.
On the map, the triangle that was South Lambeth/Stockwell Common has reduced in size. It is still a triangle and along its northern edge, Stockwell Crescent is marked.
Stockwell Crescent (now Stockwell Terrace) was constructed in the 1840s with the idea to start an elegant middle-class suburb. These three-storey mid-nineteenth-century terraced houses are Grade II listed and were the first dedicated suburban houses west of Clapham Road. Many many more followed.
Leading east off Clapham Road was The Grove. If we were walking in 1865 along The Grove, we’d have to cross the nursery and a hedge to reach St Ann’s Road. Afterwards, no doubt, we’d have muddy boots. The unmarked road leading from ‘Van Gogh Corner’ gained the name Russell Street by the time of this map.
Further north along St Ann’s Road and road names haven’t stopped shuffling around.
The northern section previously called Holland Street has gone and the St Ann’s Road name extends north all the way to South Island Place. What was previously also called Holland Street (running east-west) in 1829 is now renamed St Ann’s Road, even though the north-south running St Ann’s Road is still called, well, St Ann’s Road.
There’s a brand new east-west Holland Street, one block north of what previously was the original east-west Holland Street (now the east-west St Ann’s Road).
Are you following me?
The following Ordnance Survey map dates from 1873 - the very year Vincent van Gogh started to lodge in Stockwell.
More of South Lambeth has been built, infilling all the gaps west of Clapham Road. But, during the late 1860s, the main section of St Ann’s Road was renamed Hackford Road - to the great relief of postal workers and this final map shows that change.
Later, in further local street name changes, The Grove became Durand Gardens and Russell Street became Hillyard Street.
* * *
At the age of 20, in 1873, Van Gogh arrived in London to start work at an art dealership at the London branch of Goupil & Cie. From quite a wealthy Dutch family, he had got a job with them during 1869 in The Hague. He travelled on company business to both London and Paris but decided on a more permanent move to the London branch. Starting work there on 19 May 1873, the London dealership was located in Southampton Street, Covent Garden.
Of note at this juncture, Vincent was very interested in art and it was his day job, but he wasn’t yet an artist.
He spent a year in the city, walking its streets, crossing its bridges and gaining inspiration from the surroundings.
At first, Van Gogh lived in Brixton and on arrival there, he purchased a top hat, a symbol of the successful Victorian middle-class. Van Gogh was shocked by the poverty evident on the streets of London. London was twenty times the size of any town that Van Gogh had known.
In his spare time, Vincent enjoyed visits to the Royal Academy to view favourites like John Constable and the Pre-Raphaelite painters. Later, Van Gogh would use English titles for some of his works, hoping that they would sell well in Britain.
He already had a love for English literature and Charles Dickens in particular. He continued to read Dickens until his death. In his letters home, Van Gogh mentions over one hundred books by British authors. Writers such as George Eliot, with her social realism novel Middlemarch, influenced Van Gogh’s understanding of social reform.
His favourite novel though was John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. It is an allegory of a man who must travel on a path filled with many obstacles.
During August 1873, Vincent van Gogh moved into 87 Hackford Road. At the time, Mrs Sarah Ursula Loyer was living at the house with her daughter Eugenie, and there was another tenant called Samuel Plowman. As a widow, Sarah Loyer was able to generate income by running a small school for children out of her front parlour and letting out her rooms to lodgers.
The tube didn't arrive in Stockwell until 1890 and Vincent walked to and from work each day. It was a long way from Hackford Road to Covent Garden. His usual route to work was up Hackford Road, left into Holland Street (which is now called Caldwell Street), up Clapham Road to the Oval, then up Kennington Road, across Westminster Bridge and then various different routes to Southampton Street.
Back at the house, Van Gogh soon fell in love with Eugenie Loyer. His love was documented in letters to his landlady’s daughter, dotted with Keats’s poems of love and desire. His advances were however totally unrequited - she was engaged to a previous lodger. He became obsessive and a nuisance to the quiet Eugenie. He was asked to leave by Sarah Loyer and find new lodgings (in Kennington as it happened).
Before he left Hackford Road, he sketched its Georgian terraces, including his own abode.
The three houses depicted on the right in the sketch were subsequently demolished.
We know only scant other details about Vincent’s year in London but we do know that at first he was very happy; by the end of his time he was quite miserable. Van Gogh became more and more religious. It was at this time that he decided he wished to pursue a career as a priest.
He left London in June 1874. Soon after, he was volunteering as a pastor in the Borinage mining area in Belgium. Britain’s rising socialism had influenced Van Gogh so much that he donated much of what he and the Church had, to the mining families to alleviate their poverty. The Church authorities were not best pleased and fired Van Gogh for harming their governance in the region.
The year after he'd left London, he had visited Paris for a longer period. Just a few years later he became an artist and moved permanently to France.
NOTES
Van Gogh’s Hackford Road sketch is the earliest surviving drawing from his English period. It was only during the 1971 postal strike that Paul Chalcroft put two and two together and realised that Van Gogh had sketched his own lodgings. His detective work was made more difficult in that the three rightmost buildings in the sketch were demolished leaving 87 as an end terrace. Only then were historical items found in the house linked to Van Gogh (rather than an anonymous, slightly religious Victorian Dutch lodger).
In April 1876, Vincent van Gogh briefly returned to England to take unpaid work as a supply teacher in a small boarding school in Ramsgate. When the proprietor moved to Isleworth in Middlesex, Van Gogh went with him. Isleworth is thus the fourth area in Greater London to host a Van Gogh residence.
A friend of a friend lived in Stockwell Terrace during the mid 1980s and, when I first learnt to drive, I'd pick up my friend from the house of the friend of my friend who lived there. I was so keen on driving - I found the freedom of driving darned fantastic after years on public transport - that I was largely Jane’s taxi service to and from Willesden Green where she lived, and Stockwell Terrace. I fell out of love with driving around London in due course and back in love with public transport.
As is semi-usual, there’s a video where I walk the walk…