The queues are a major nuisance. I expect you can avoid them if you are the kind of person who is well prepared. But then, you are probably not the kind of person who appreciates van Gogh.
Once inside, the crowds are the next problem. You can't see the paintings in these far-from-ideal circumstances. You have to peer through the gaps between photographers.
For that is what nearly everyone is doing. They are moving slowly from left to right with their cameras or phones or ipads in front of their faces. Taking pictures of pictures.
For future reference, I assume. Or to prove they were actually there. They don't seem to be actually looking at the pictures.
The queues, the crowds, its all worth it. Because there they are. The potato eaters, the self portraits, the wheatfields, the starry skies, the almond blossoms. All in their glorious realness. All the actual things that he actually did.
You can see how it was for him. One mad rush to get it all down. His biography may bring his personal story to life. His paintings let you live part of his life with him.
This time it was the almond blossom painting that I found most interesting. Very William Morris. Painted around six years before Morris's death. Had van Gogh seen any of Morris's designs, I wonder.
The landscape paintings made me think again about van Gogh's style, his process. The swirls, as we usually refer to the marks he makes, are more studied than random. The direction of the paint in the marks is very important to the overall impression.
And I was reminded of the recent Hockney paintings of trees (Bigger Trees Near Warter) when I saw van Gogh's The Fall of the Leaves. The colours of the trees in particular are just like Hockney's. How far ahead of his time was Vincent?