The Kröller-Müller Museum, which Andrew and I visited last spring, is a lovely and relatively short drive from Amsterdam. As we see it, an excursion to the Kröller-Müller has to be one of the most rewarding experiences of any European visit.
Recognized as having the second-largest Van Gogh collection in the world (the largest being—not surprisingly—at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam), the Kröller-Müller has almost 90 paintings and over 180 drawings, to say nothing of the many other modern masterpieces found in the collection. No wonder the museum is so highly rated and finds itself accommodating so many visitors (but dealing with all the visitors is done very well, and there’s no specific problem with crowds).
And an equally delightful experience—especially on a beautiful spring day—is the Kröller-Müller’s location in the De Hoge Veluwe Park, a natural gem surrounding the museum.
Perhaps I’m going a little overboard, but when such an opportunity comes along, it’s worth sharing with friends. So here we go, and Andrew and I—like many other visitors, to any museum—like our snapshots.
And those two surprises? Take a look. One of Van Gogh’s “starry night” paintings (the first of some 21 versions), and a lovely still life. Both, for me, particularly rewarding. And for now, I’ll just share Andrew’s photos of these two favorites and instead of trying to describe them myself, I’ll simply sneak in the captions posted with the paintings.
VINCENT VAN GOGH
Caféterras bij nacht (Place du Forum) circa September 1888.
More than six months after arriving in Arles in the south of France, Van Gogh paints this terrace of a café by the light of gas lamps. He has set himself the difficult task of making a nocturnal painting without using black. It would become one of the highlights of his oeuvre. With the abundance of light on the walls and marquise, and with the orange floor, he makes the terrace stand out sharply against the darker blue and green tints of the rest of the painting. The yellow light of the gas lamps intensifies the blue of the starry sky, the first in his oeuvre. The painting exudes the carefree atmosphere of a sultry summer night.
The fact that Van Gogh paints what he sees is borne out by later astronomical research. He has painted the constellations precisely as they appeared on the night of 16 or 17 September 1888.
VINCENT VAN GOGH
Stilleven met akkerbloemen en rozen circa 1887-1888.
This large flower still life was added to the collection as a Van Gogh in 1974, but was subsequently dismissed in 2003, mainly on the grounds of the unusually large format and the atypical signature. After thorough research, the painting was once again attributed to Van Gogh in 2012. Underneath the flower piece, an x-ray image reveals an earlier image of two wrestlers, which Van Gogh was known to have painted at the art academy in Antwerp. He regularly reused his canvases. Moreover a new research technique has determined that the pigments used are those of Van Gogh.