In 1905 Helene Kröller-Müller, the wife of a shipping magnate, began taking art appreciation classes with the influential critic (and teacher and dealer) H.P. Bremmer at her home in The Hague. Bremmer was one of Van Gogh’s earliest admirers and encouraged his students to acquire the painter’s works whenever possible. Three years into her tutelage, Kröller-Müller acquired her first Van Gogh, Edge of a Wood (1883), for 110 guilders. She went on to amass the largest collection of his work in private hands, shaping his reputation (and market) in the process: by 1912 she was having to fork out 16,000 guilders for Bridge at Arles (Pont de Langlois) (1888). In 1935 Kröller-Müller donated her collection of work by Van Gogh and other Neo-Impressionist masters to the Dutch state, and the government set up a museum to house the collection in a rural area of central Holland. The museum is now presenting all 88 of its paintings by Van Gogh, arranging them into three themes that preoccupied the painter during his short-lived stint as a preacher: faith, hope and love (15 September–3 January 2027).
Find out more from the Kröller-Müller Museum’s website.
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