Our visit to the Van Gogh Alive exhibition coincided with a Red Thunderstorm warning and a darkening of skies inside and out. The multimedia presentation of slides and images to illustrate the different styles the artist used at different stages in his life was accompanied by music from Vivaldi, Saint-Saens and Dukas, and detailed his journey through periods of both joy and despair. I was surprised by the blossom painting in Japonesque style, that seemed completely at odds with all that had gone before and all that was to come.

Purple blues from forget-me-not through to lapis struck me as calming, comforting gestures; the vibrant yellows used in his paintings of Arles and St Remy reflected the joy to be found in lending your whole heart to creativity in the midst of despair and illness. The exhibition made me long to be in the Provencale countryside again and it struck me that the young Hong Kongers who were obviously the primary target audience for this exhibition can never have imagined landscapes like this that are so familiar to Europeans, unless, of course, they have travelled out of Hong Kong and China. It must be an alien world to them.

This exhibition was great background to the life of Van Gogh. I’m pleased to have seen it.