Melbourne's Van Gogh and the Seasons exhibition presents a once in a generation opportunity to experience a cross-section of the great Dutch master's paintings and drawings. Glowing oil paintings, shot through with vibrant colours, passionate brushwork and sombre tight drawings are presented together with a large body of contextual work.

The last major van Gogh exhibition in Australia was in 1993, curated by James Mollison - it toured Melbourne and Brisbane under the title Van Gogh: His sources, genius and influence. The problem then, as it remains today, is that it is exceptionally difficult and expensive to borrow original van Gogh paintings, so invariably exhibitions become thematic. In 1993, the exhibition of van Gogh's work was generously supported with extensive loans of Realist and Impressionist works at one end, and post-impressionist paintings through to the expressionists and Kandinsky at the other.

The Melbourne show adopts the four seasons as its thematic context and has the 49 works by van Gogh at its core, with a great array of Japanese prints from the gallery's own collection as an illustration of an important source of influence on van Gogh, plus a selection of 18 relatively nondescript prints that once belonged to the artist.

Why is van Gogh the most recognisable and popular artist in the modern western tradition of art? As is widely known in museum circles, no artist is a greater exhibition magnet than Vincent and to my knowledge no blockbuster exhibition that has focused on van Gogh has ever failed. He may be the quintessential misunderstood genius artist, who died by his own hand at the age of 37 in 1890, but a tragic biography is no guarantee of popular posthumous success – after all, so many artists have been 'born under Saturn' and had short and miserable lives. Van Gogh, thanks to his brother Theo, was always financial and had enough money for art supplies, food and the occasional trip to the brothel.

Van Gogh's art is popularly accessible, chromatically brilliant and usually is built around a dramatic narrative. The driving emotionalism and the expressive freedom of his brushstrokes swallow up the observer and, in a strange voyeuristic experience, you feel as if you are standing behind his elbow and reliving the emotions he is depicting in paint. None of these features is unique to van Gogh, and one can think of Edvard Munch and Maurice de Vlaminck as possible parallels, even though one would hasten to add that they were very different artists in temperament and ability than van Gogh.

I recall that as a very young man living in Europe I had the privilege of seeing a great van Gogh retrospective that brought tears to my eyes and I wanted to share the excitement I felt with Kenneth Clark, the doyen of the English art world, to whom I had been quite recently introduced. Clark's response to my enthusiasm was measured and profound. He said that he did not quite share my enthusiasm for van Gogh's paintings, he produced about 860 oil paintings at a frenetic rate in just over a decade, most in the final two years of his life, but Clark admired more his drawings, of which there are about 1200. Clark thought that van Gogh's real genius lay as a letter writer in which he expressed a new attitude to art-making and this provided access for many millions of people to a whole philosophy of art.

It took me a good while to fully understand the implications of Lord Clark's observation, but it does provide us with a possible clue to van Gogh's immense popularity. The artist's literary voice, preserved in his 820 letters, most of which were addressed to his brother, gives us intimate access to understanding the emotional journey implicit in his art. In fact, the most 'neglected' period in van Gogh's art is his Parisian period, when he shared a flat with Theo and had no need to write. Otherwise this immense diary of creativity, in an exacting and painstakingly honest manner, traces the anguish, agony and ecstasy experienced by the great artist as he struggled with his subjects, technique and himself to make his art.

Although van Gogh's great paintings may be a little thin on the ground in the Melbourne exhibition, those that are present warrant the trip. A wheatfield, with cypresses (1889) is one of those glorious turbulent landscapes from Saint-Rémy, where the inner tranquillity of the scene is flung to life through the inner turmoil experienced by the artist. About 15 months earlier, van Gogh painted another Wheatfield (1888), this time in Arles, where it is a celebration of a rich harvest as is the companion painting Wheatfield (1888), where the wheat already appears gathered in sheaves, like peasant wealth.

Tree trunks in the grass (1890), painted in Saint-Rémy about three months before his death, is one of the most dramatic and intense paintings in the whole exhibition with power, vibrancy and chromatic brilliance. It is as if flames of emotion race up the tree trunks, while the wildflowers as a floral tribute present a hymn of praise to the glory of the day.

Vincent van Gogh never loses the ability to thrill and disturb his audience. The supercharged emotional intensity of the colours and the brushstrokes simultaneously seduces and disturbs us and the encounter with van Gogh in the flesh is always memorable and sometimes life changing.

Van Gogh and the Seasons is a memorable milestone in the great tradition established with the Winter Masterpieces exhibitions at the National Gallery of Victoria that commenced in 2004 with The Impressionists: Masterpieces from the Musée d'Orsay setting a new record in museum attendances. I suspect that this record is about to be broken.