‘Per-Kiridy’ at High Tide, 1889, by Théo van Rysselberghe (1862 – 1926), Oil on canvas, 67.8 x 106.3 cm, Collection Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, the Netherlands (KM 103.422), © Collection Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, the Netherlands. Photographer: Rik Klein Gotink
Helene Kröller-Müller was a pioneer. From 1907 onwards she amassed an extraordinary collection of works by stellar modern artists; Picasso, Braque, Metzinger, Gleizes. Léger, Rivera, Gris, Mondrian, Severini, Seurat, Signac are but a few. She was one of the first to recognise Van Gogh for his genius and would finally own 90 of his paintings and 185 of his drawings, a collection second only to Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum.
Kröller-Müller was keen on collecting ‘thinking‘ art, rather than ‘feeling’ art. Despite being born in Germany, not for her were the German Expressionists with their bright vibrant colours, too emotional. For her the neo-impressionists were artists who thought things through.
Now we can see part of her collection in London at the National Gallery. Radical Harmony is an exhibition of neo-impressionists, the “Pointellists”, a term originally used by critics to ridicule the works. Developed by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac on a ‘scientific’ basis, they painted small dots or dabs, of colours making use of the long established theory of complementary colours. Going back to the 17th century it was Isaac Newton who apparently first explored the idea of complementary colours in 1666. This work related to his mapping the spectrum as a colour circle. The term “complement” as applied to the colours on opposite sides of the circle had to wait until 1794 when it was coined by Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford. Michel Eugène Chevreul’s work on colour theory in the late 19th century was hugely important to the neo-impressionists.
Thus the dismissively named Pointellists developed a belief that juxtaposing colours would mix optically in the viewer’s eye and intensify what the viewer saw. The idea being that optical mixing would tend more towards white rather than the mixing of paint on the palette that reduces the intensity of colours and leads towards black. Red placed next to its complimentary of green augments the perception of both colours as does orange next to blue, purple or mauve next to yellow and one can see these pairings in the paintings.
In practice it did not always work and there is a greyness that lingers in some paintings but there are also ones of great luminosity, a subtlety of hues, a calm. But the neo-impressionists were not solely a movement who thought only of colour. Dashes, dabs and dots appear in black and white drawings. They push the hatched line out of the way, and with a lighter or heavier touch and the use of the texture of chain and laid paper they do away with blending and rubbing.
Conté crayon and white chalk on paper
53.5 x 39 cm
© Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle en Heino/ Wijhe the Netherlands
These artists also thought in terms of form through the use of more simplified, geometry that reveals the relationship within the pictorial space. The curve of the dancers’ skirts, the parallel lines of their legs and the neck of the musician’s instrument in Georges Seurat’s Le Chahut (1889-90), give a rhythm, a movement to the piece. The way the musician is depicted from the back incorporates the viewer into the painting as audience to the performance. Le Chahut was also the first largescale painting by Seurat to enter a collection, Kröller-Müller, before his La Grande Jatte went to Chicago. Kröller-Müller missed out on purchasing it.
You may have the impression that this is an exhibition is devoted mainly to Seurat and Signac. Yet nothing could be further from that. There are many works by artists one knows well; Camille Pissarro, Lucien Pissarro, Henry van de Velde, the architect of the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, the Netherlands, as well as Vincent Van Gogh. Other artists may be slightly less well known; Théo van Rysselberghe, Henri Edmond Cross, Maximilien Luce, and some one may never have come across until now; Jan Toorop, Georges Lemmen, Jan Vijlbrief, Johan Aarts, Johan Thorn Prikker, Anna Boch. Our lose that we have not known them before. Prikker’s chalk and pastel works on paper remind one of Van Gogh’s sepia drawings with reed pen but Prikker’s burst with vibrant colours and swirling movement long to live in the mind.
Pastel and brown ink (aniline) on paper
48.7 x 59 cm
Collection Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, the Netherlands (KM 124.293)
© Collection Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, the Netherlands. Photographer: Rik Klein Gotink
Radical Harmony, Helene Kröller-Müller’s Neo-Impressionists at the National Gallery, Sainsbury Wing, 13 September 2025 ‒ 8 February 2026