I’m interested in Martin Bailey’s blog post (see below) about the Sunflowers not because it reveals the Prime Minister’s enthusiasm for Van Gogh, but because the painting was acquired as a result of special pleading by Jim Ede, then an incredibly junior curator at the Tate, only just out of the Slade, on behalf of the National Gallery aka The National Gallery of British Art, and that Charles Aitken described himself as Director of the National Gallery tout seul, without apparent reference to Charles Holmes, the Director of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. It shows how symbiotic the two institutions were, and intriguing that such a young curator should have been so successful in acquiring it, when the tastes of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square were still very conservative.

https://www.theartnewspaper.com/blog/sunflowers-exhibition-australia