Going van Gogh

Tucked away in the wooded countryside of the southeast section of the Netherlands is the Kröller-Muller Museum.

It’s not as big and famous as the Rijksmuseum and Van Gogh Museum of Amsterdam, and it’s certainly not as easy to find.

At least it wasn’t for this Spokane visitor who traveled last fall, first by plane to Amsterdam, then by train to Apeldoorn and then by local bus to Otterlo. Here visitors are deposited at the entry to the enormous Hoge Veluwe National Park, where the museum is located. Hundreds of free bicycles are available to tour the park and reach the museum itself, several miles from the entry.

But once you arrive at your destination, it is worth the journey.

Inside the museum’s buildings is a treasure trove of early modernist works amassed in the early 20th century by Helene Muller, wife of Dutch industrialist Anton Kröller.

Helene Kröller-Muller had the desire and, more importantly, the resources to collect thousands of objects including works by such modernist masters as George Seurat, Paul Signac, Juan Gris, Pablo Picasso, Fernand Leger, Bart van der Leck, Odilon Redon, Diego Rivera and Piet Mondrian.

Always central to Kröller-Muller’s thinking was Vincent van Gogh. Eventually the collection would include more than 90 van Gogh paintings and 185 drawings, second only in size to the Van Gogh Museum.

Fortunately, art lovers in the Pacific Northwest do not have to travel to the interior of the Netherlands to see part of the collection.

A grand cross-section, 80 pieces in all, is on view in “Van Gogh to Mondrian: Modern Art from the Kröller-Muller Museum” at Seattle Art Museum through Sept. 12.

The show is traveling in the fall to its second and last stop, Atlanta’s High Museum.

“The exhibition gives a very good impression of the wide span of work Mrs. Kröller-Muller acquired,” said head of collections Piet de Jorge from his office at the Kröller-Muller Museum.

“Making an exhibition is like doing a crossword puzzle,” said de Jorge. “It’s a mix of motifs. You have to find the right match.”

Part of that diversity is the inclusion of the neoimpressionist paintings by Seurat and Signac, and the cubists’ canvases by Leger, Picasso and Gris. “These were all very loved by Helene Kröller-Muller,” said de Jorge.

Without question, van Gogh’s 10 exquisite paintings and 12 stunning drawings are the magnets, and the show’s floor plan puts them at the heart of the five-room display.

The exhibition begins with the chronologically earliest works in the collection, the neoimpressionists’ and symbolists’ paintings.

“George Seurat is the first artist you see,” said Susan Rosenberg, associate curator of modern and contemporary art at the Seattle Art Museum. “All the other painters would be unthinkable without him.”

The visitor then travels through the room of cubists’ paintings before arriving at van Gogh’s Dutch period.

A major surprise to many viewers is the van Gogh drawings. Because of the delicate nature of paper and its sensitivity to light, these works are rarely seen.

“People love the drawings,” said Erika Lindsay of the museum’s public relations department. “Most people say they have never seen a van Gogh drawing before.”

The dozen delicate drawings of peasants and farm life show the influences of painters Jean-Francois Millet and Jules Breton.

“Visitors are just taken aback with his draftsmanship skill,” said Lindsay. “They didn’t know van Gogh was capable of that.”

The exhibit moves from van Gogh’s Dutch period to a room with works created when he lived in France.

“You immediately go from dark to light,” said curator Rosenberg, “which has a bit of a spiritual connotation.”

In this room are three of the most popular canvases in the exhibition: “Self Portrait” (1887), “Café Terrace at Night” (1888) and “The Garden of the Asylum at Saint-Remy” (1889).

“The ‘Night Terrace’ painting shows the bright side of Vincent, the good life so to speak,” said de Jorge. ” ‘The Garden of the Asylum’ shows the distressed, turbulent and highly emotional part. Although it looks like a peaceful garden, it also shows the torment and anxiety of his person.”

(Van Gogh died at the age of 37 in 1890, the result of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.)

At the Seattle Art Museum, these two pictures are juxtaposed on opposite walls.

“It’s sort of the beginning and the end of a story,” observed de Jorge.