By James Brewer
We can thank the shipping and iron ore trades for the genesis of one of the world’s greatest collections of art in the style known as Neo-Impressionism, with its gleaming exposition of colour and light.
The collection realised the aesthetic vision in the early 20thcentury of Helene Kröller-Müller, whose husband Anton Kröller was an ultimately profligate Rotterdam shipowner, to introduce the public to sensational new artworks. These were from painters with remarkable colour-blending techniques that subtly synthesised the big idea… of strategically deploying dots. Or as it is widely known, pointillism.
Until February 8th, 2026, London has a rare opportunity to view a proud selection of pictorial gems loaned largely by the Dutch-based Kröller-Müller Museum. It is the National Gallery’s first show dedicated purely to Neo-Impressionism. Lenders include the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; Museum Barberini, Potsdam; Tate; and pictures from the Gallery’s own collection.
Along the way, courtesy of the artists we call at the smugglers’ coast of northern France, a weekend leisure island in the Seine, small ports of the sun-soaked Mediterranean, and the Catalan coast with its kaleidoscopic rays of sunlight – with more than a nod to the cabarets of Paris.
Ranging from the nuanced elegance of seascapes including the working waterways of northern France, to landscapes and paintings that touch on industrial conflict, to personal portraits,Radical Harmony: Helene Kröller-Müller’s Neo-Impressionistschronicles how a new means of colour expression jolted artistic circles, starting in the late 19thcentury.
Practitioners were up against critics who slammed their innovations as a facile insult to the true development of painting, but today the brilliance of the key works in this genre is recognised without question. What a tribute to the perspicacity of Helene, who sought to bring to the viewing public meaning through new art.
Born in the industrial Ruhr region of Germany, her father was the founder of Wm H Müller & Co, which traded in iron and steel. On her marriage to Anton Kröller, the couple moved to the Netherlands. When Helene’s father died in 1889, Anton at the age of 27 took on leadership of the company. Six years later, Müller & Co acquired the Nederlandse Stoomboot Maatschappij (Dutch Steamship Company), which ran services from Rotterdam and Amsterdam to London. He renamed the company the Batavier Line, rebranding the funnels of its three ships with a large white M for ‘Müller’ over a red background.
Anton expanded activities into grain in Russia, Romania and Argentina, and iron ore mines elsewhere. He helped develop Rotterdam into a transit port for Germany, but after World War I his financial forays and dubious accounting almost led to the empire’s collapse, even imperilling theRotterdamsche Bank. The couple were left with little more than their country house in the Dutch village of Otterlo in the Veluwe national park.
For Helene, the personal watershed had come in 1911, when she survived a life-threatening operation. She vowed to devote the rest of her life to establishing a ‘monument to culture.’ Her great passion was for the output of Vincent Van Gogh, more than 90 of his paintings eventually featuring in her inventory. From 1913 she opened her entire collection to the public by exhibiting it in the office of her husband’s firm.
For many years this was one of the few places in Europe where such a large collection of modern art was permanently on display.
It now holds 11,500 works including the largest collection by Vincent except for Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum. Van Gogh himself had praised the ‘fresh revelation of colour” produced by the pointilliste technique. One of Vincent’s paintings, an 1888 variation onThe Sower, has been loaned to the National Gallery exhibition. While not in the pointillist idiom, it is striking for its tapestry of contrasting blues and orange and a golden sun illuminating the field as a peasant plants the seeds.
We are treated to an absorbing introduction to the artist hero of Neo-Impressionism, Georges Seurat who dedicated theories of colour relationships to enhancing what he had absorbed from his traditional academic training. He found that colours calibrated in tiny brush marks with their opposites on the colour wheel gained luminosity in the viewer’s retina. This gave a more striking force than mixes on the palette.
Focusing on such optics was to become known as “pointillism” although its protagonists disliked the term. Seurat readily seized on divergent influences: what he had been taught by a pupil of Ingres at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, ancient Egyptian and Greek friezes, the Louvre’s early Italian and 17thcentury French collections, and contemporary poster design. From 1885 he delighted in coastal scenes, often devoid of human presence. A salient (!) example from his summers in Normandy isLe Bec Du Hoc, a spectacular angular promontory rearing starkly two miles east of the fishing port of Grandcamp.
For many viewers, the headliner will be Seurat’s atmospheric painting of a can-can saloon. The racy piece is entitledLe Chahut(1889‒90) and is on display in the UK for the first time. It has been described as the greatest Neo-Impressionist painting to have been snapped up by Helene. One of Seurat’stoiles de luttes(battle canvases) as he liked to refer to his most provocative pieces, it is a lively, geometrically rigorous (with its repetitive diagonals) and at the same time erotic depiction of what was the most risqué dance performed in Parisian café-concerts.
The dancers kick high in disciplined line, as they and the back of the double bass player and the conductor’s baton express what might be a feeling of elation in the hall at a brief liberation from workaday cares. The scene recalls poster designs of Parisian gaiety but is reminiscent too of Greek black figure vases.
Le Chahutwas exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in 1890 – Seurat had helped found the Société des Artistes Indépendants six years earlier. The canvas was the last by Seurat before he died at the age of just 31. Seurat had exhausted himself in organising the salon, possibly developing an infectious disease, and died before the exhibition was over.
Other Seurat treats from the Kröller-Müller Museum includeSunday atPort-en-Bessin(1888), a harbour view with fluttering flags, a hazy sky and gentle waters within the bay, while even an ordinary guardrail is distinguished by variegated pointilliste tones.
A tranquil rendering ofThe Canal of Gravelines, in the Direction of the Sea(1890) is a contrast to the fact that Gravelines has long been notorious as a base for smugglers and is now one of the departure points for unseaworthy boats filled with refugees lured to take the dangerous crossing to England.
Napoleon encouraged English smugglers to use Gravelines and Dunkirk; the first-mentioned port had a compound accommodating 300 Englishmen, and among the smuggled ‘goods’ were escaped French prisoners of war.
Seurat introduced his new technique to Paul Signac (1863-1935) who did not need much convincing, for he had been inspired by the optical experiments of Claude Monet. The men picked up theories on colour perception especially those of the chemist Michel Eugène Chevreul on the complementarity of colours such as blue and orange.
In his best-known and largest painting,A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, which is held by the Art Institute of Chicago, Seurat depicted citizens strolling and relaxing in a park west of Paris on La Grande Jatte, an island on the Seine The exhibition has from the National Gallery’s permanent collection one of the small studies in oil on wood for the large painting – Seurat made around 100 such studies including 42 sketches in oils. With a few strokes of paint, he experiments with placing figures on the shady grass bordering the river. The curators describe this as “painted in pre-pointilliste style,” with dashes, rather than dots, of colour.
Signac catalogued his eloquent renderings by Opus numbers, suggesting an empathy between his visual art and symphonic poems. For instance,The Lighthousehe describes as his Opus 183; andThe Jetty, Grey Weatheras opus 180. Both are from 1888. Such notation certainly might reflect the choreography of textures, lines and rhythms of his paintings – compositions with marks taking their cues from the way music is experienced. Henri-Edmond Cross (1856 – 1910) also an eminent Neo-Impressionist, chose an equally striking metaphor for Signac’s pictures: “a play of hues as ravishing as happy combinations of gems.”
When young, Signac painted scenes of the bridges of Paris from aboard a single-masted boat. An experienced yachtsman, he spent a month sailing from Brittany to the south of France, where he anchored in the modest fishing port of Saint-Tropez, which no-one dreamed then would become the celebrities’ playground it is today. Henri Matisse stayed with him there and in 1904, painted in pointillist styleLuxe, Calme etVolupté(richness, calm, and pleasure) which was a line from a poem by Charles Baudelaire. Matisse shared VanGogh’s fascination with the sun-drenched Mediterranean landscape and used vivid and unmixed colours to capture the shimmering summer light.
Among many marine canvases, Signac made a series inspired by Claude Joseph Vernet’s mid-18th century ‘Vues des ports de France.’ These were views of La Rochelle, Saint-Tropez, and Marseilles. Ports elsewhere portrayed included Venice, Rotterdam and Constantinople.
Signac painted at the picturesque fishing village of Collioure, 28 km from Perpignan, which was accessible only by sea. Writing inTheTimesrecently, travel journalist Jonathan Samuels said of a visit to Collioure: “Just as Matisse and [André] Derain surely were, each day we were mesmerised by the [Royal Castle] walls’ shifting hues, gleaming golden at dawn, warming to apricot by midday and deepening to violet as the sun sinks into the Mediterranean.” After Matisse and Derain had passed through the town, Collioure became known internationally as the City of Painters.
In 2024 French TV viewers voted Collioure Le village préféré des Français (the nation’s favourite village).
With the 1887 oil on canvasCollioure, The Belltower, Opus 164, which is in the Kröller-Müller portfolio, Signac captured “the light of the sun reflected from all sides” and the glistening heat of the port, in a predominantly orange tone that “washes out” the sky. Once more, dots of complementary orange and blue come into play, this time across the entire canvas. On visiting Signac in 1912, Helene Kröller-Müller bought the painting on the spot. It was one of her first Neo-Impressionist purchases.
At the London exhibition, Signac’sThe Dining Room(1886-87) is paired with another interior scene by him,A Sunday(oil on canvas, 1888-90), an exceptional loan from a private collection.
The distinctive efforts of the two pioneers were dubbed as “fauve” by a critic, suggesting they were painting like wild animals, and the label stuck to a section of their contemporaries. Eventually, Signac’s works became more spontaneous, often in the brilliant colours of his harbour and seascape scenes. Signac and Cross abandoned the coloured dot system for broader and orderly brushstrokes like mosaic patchwork as they and others including Matisse moved towards fauvism.
We are introduced to the multi-talented couple Maria Sèthe and Henry van de Velde. From the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp – Flemish Community, has travelledMaria Sèthe at the Harmoniumpainted by Théo van Rysselberghe (1862–1926). In a prime example of the stippling phenomenon, van Rysselberghe uses shades of blues and violet to make his point, if you will forgive a pun – look closely to confirm that everything is speckled: Maria’s wooden seat at the piano, the room curtain and the play of shadow on her face as she turns from the harmonium in the afternoon light to look at the viewer.
From a wealthy industrialist family, Maria Sèthe (1867–1943) is very much part of the pointilliste story – she strongly supported the Neo-Impressionists in Belgium – as is her husband, the prolific Neo-Impressionist painter, exponent of Art Nouveau and architect, the irrepressible van de Velde (1863–1957).
Maria had been a pupil in Brussels of van Rysselberghe and others, and during a trip to London got to know the Arts and Crafts movement and its central figure William Morris (1834-1896). The connection greatly influenced her and her husband’s career. The couple created innovative clothes for women, and designed furniture, wallpapers and fabrics for interiors. On show is Henry’sWoman Sewingin pastel and chalk and graphite on paper, from 1891. We also see Henry’s subdued oil on canvasTwilight(about 1889). Amng projects to his credit, Henry would design the Kröller-Müller Museum. Regrettably the duo’s cultural contribution tended for many years to be overlooked.
In 1892 Théo, who was keen on portraiture, made a life-size portrait in oils of his wife Maria van Rysselberghe-Monnom in the setting of a well-off home. The portrait is largely composed of blue and orange dots in various tints. The blue of the background and Maria’s shadow creates a strong contrast with the orange of the dress and the curtain. Maria Monnom was a writer who published the Belgian avant-garde magazine L’Art moderne.
Théo van Rysselberghe was among those keen on dramatic coastal scenes – sadly these days the Normandy littoral is at the mercy of erosion.
A great experimenter, Jan Toorop (1858-1928) madeSea, using both paintbrush and palette knife to suggest the effect of the waves breaking on the North Sea coast at Katwijk, where he was living in 1899. Looking close-up, you can see an impressive medley of horizontal pale colours. Another time, he beckons us to the Thames for an unusual, low-level view of Charing Cross Bridge. Toorop was said to be the most avant-garde artist from the Netherlands at the time.
Radical and harmony are both key words here, given the political overtones of the Neo-Impressionist movement as artists reacted against the brutality of the industrial age. Some signalled by painting the struggles of the working class and attaining unity through colour and geometry, that they wanted to reshape society.
Away from landscape, scenes of entertainment and domestic calm, and graceful portraits, another leading artist fascinated by contemporary London was Georges Lemmen, a friend of Seurat and Signac. He often chose genteel subjects but was aware of the pollution blighting the Thames. From the Kröller-Müller Museum comes hisFactories on the Thamesof about 1892, when he imbued glorious orange and blue (that combination again) into a stunning sunset to highlight the belching chimneys, and cleverly decorated the river with green-flecked waves.
Maximilien Luce (1858-1941) joined Signac and Jan Toorop in wielding the form to convey political clout. Luce’s art supported the ideals of the anarchist movement in championing workers’ rights.
At the invitation of Théo van Rysselberghe and the poet Emile Verhaeren, Luce spent time in Belgium in the industrial city of Charleroi and moved by the harsh working conditions of steelworkers, painted more than 30 canvases there. WithThe Iron Foundry, 1899, employees combine their strength to process the molten ore amid searing heat, flames and smoke from the blast furnace. Orange and blue dominate again, and the whole suggests the later 20thcentury trend of futurism, which appropriated the dynamism, speed, and energy of modern machinery. When Luce was in Charleroi, some 80,000 workers toiled in the region in coal, steel and glass industries. Helene Kröller-Müller boughtThe Iron Foundrydirectly from Luce in 1922. Paradoxically it hung for many years in the office of her capitalist husband. Luce was one of the innocent people falsely implicated in the 1894 assassination by an Italian anarchist of the French President Sadi Carnot.
Adherents of Neo-Impressionism included father and son Camille and Lucien Pissarro, the former adapting his approach from Impressionism after meeting Georges Seurat. In 1884 the Pissarro family settled in the village of Éragny in the suburbs of Paris. InLate Afternoon in our Meadowfrom 1887 Camille has long shadows thrown by trees, and there are small touches of pink and yellow, with blue, mauve and a little orange in the shadowed areas. The cream, yellow and blue applied to the sky intensify the light. Camille Pissarro painted several views of the meadow.
Lucien Pissarro’s watercolour on silk from about 1888At the Café-Concert, now owned by the British Museum, takes its hazy viewpoint from the stalls of the cabaret. This is pointillism par excellence.
The audience is silhouetted, with tall ‘bucket’ hats for women and high-crowned bowler hats for men, and a performer is just about illuminated by the footlights.
Helene Kröller-Müller would have been happy to see this London show. She believed as did many of the artists celebrated here, that it was the duty of art to extract a deeper, spiritual significance from the world of appearances. Their triumphs were more than a passing phase, they were a bridge to the great masters of 20thcentury art. Her entire collection was eventually donated to the Dutch government on condition that a museum be built to house it, along with her and her husband’s substantial country estate.
The exhibition is a collaboration between the National Gallery and the Kröller-Müller Museum. It is curated by Julien Domercq of the Royal Academy of Arts, Renske Cohen Tervaert of the Kröller-Müller Museum; Christopher Riopelle, the Neil Westreich Curator of Post-1800 Paintings at the National Gallery and Chiara Di Stefano, associate curator in that department at the National Gallery. They were assisted by Annabel Bai Jackson, the Dorset Curatorial Fellow for Modern and Contemporary Projects.
Captions in detail:
Factories on the Thames, about 1892. By Georges Lemmen. Oil on canvas. © Collection Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo. Photographer: Rik Klein Gotink.
Helene Kröller-Müller, photograph. © Collection Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo.
Le Bec du Hoc, Grandcamp, 1885. By Georges Seurat. Oil on canvas. © Tate. On loan from Tate.
The Channel of Gravelines, Grand Fort-Philippe, 1890. By Georges Seurat. Oil on canvas. © The National Gallery.
Late Afternoon in our Meadow, 1887. By Camille Pissarro. Oil on canvas. © The National Gallery, London.
Accepted in lieu of Inheritance Tax by HM Government (under a hybrid arrangement) from the collection of William Waldorf Astor, 3rd Viscount Astor, and allocated to the National Gallery, with the support of a generous legacy from James Francis George.
Coastal Scene, 1892. By Théo van Rysselberghe. Oil on canvas.© The National Gallery, London.
Maria van Rysselberghe-Monnom, 1892, by Théo van Rysselberghe. Oil on canvas. Collection Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo.
Port-en-Bessin, a Sunday, 1888. By Georges Seurat. Oil on canvas. © Collection Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo. Photographer: Rik Klein Gotink.
Woman sewing, 1891. By Henry van de Velde. Pastel, chalk and graphite on paper © DACS 2025 / Collection Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo. Photographer: Rik Klein Gotink.
Bridge in London (Charing Cross), 1888-9. By Jan Toorop. Oil on canvas. © Collection Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo. Photographer: Rik Klein Gotink.
The Sea, 1899. By Jan Toorop. Oil on canvas. © Collection Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo. Photographer: Rik Klein Gotink .
The Sower, 1888. By Vincent Van Gogh. Oil on canvas. Collection Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo. © Collection Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo. Photographer: Rik Klein Gotink.
Maria Sèthe at the Harmonium, 1891. By Théo van Rysselberghe. Oil on canvas. © Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp – Flemish Community.
At the Café Concert, about 1888. By Lucien Pissarro. Watercolour on silk.© The Trustees of the British Museum. The British Museum, London.
Radical Harmony: Helene Kröller Müller’s Neo-Impressionists is at the National Gallery, London, until February 8, 2026.
