Helene Kröller-Müller

Helene Müller and Anton Kröller, around 1888

Vincent van Gogh: Café terrace in the evening from the Helene Kröller-Müller collection

Helene Emma Laura Juliane Kröller-Müller (born February 11, 1869 in Horst (Essen) , † December 14, 1939 in Otterlo ) was a German-Dutch art collector. The Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo in the Netherlands, which houses the second largest Van Gogh collection in the world, was named after her .

Life

Helene Müller was born in Horst near Essen in 1869 as the daughter of a steel industrialist. The father also had business connections in the Netherlands through his trading company. She attended schools in Düsseldorf and Brussels. In 1888 she married Anton Kröller (1862–1941), the son of the head of the company's Rotterdam office and partner of her father, and moved to The Hague . She received numerous awards, such as Knight of the Order of the Dutch Lion and Knight of the Order of the Crown of Belgium .

art

From 1907 she attended lessons on art history in The Hague with Henricus Petrus Bremmer (1871–1956), a renowned art historian who became her most important advisor and who also gave important impetus to the development of the art collection.

In 1909 she bought three works by van Gogh : Sunflowers , The Sowers , and Still Life with a Bottle and Lemon . The collection grew quickly. She bought pictures from dealers in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and France, and also directly from the artists' studios, such as Paul Signac . In 1928 she and her husband established the Kröller-Müller Foundation, to which the entire art collection was then transferred. In 1938 the Kröller-Müller Museum was built in Otterlo near Arnhem by the Dutch state and the De Hoge Veluwe Foundation .

literature

Eva Rovers: Collecting for the ages. Helene Kröller-Müller: the most important Van Gogh collector in the world. Athena-Verlag, Oberhausen 2016, ISBN 978-3-89896-630-6 .

Web links

Commons : Helene Kröller-Müller - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Literature by and about Helene Kröller-Müller in the catalog of the German National Library
Website of the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo (NL)
Helene, a woman between love and art . Documentary by Leo de Boer, 2010 (Dutch, with English subtitles, 52:21 min)

Individual evidence

^ Erwin Dickhoff: Essener streets . Ed .: City of Essen - Historical Association for City and Monastery of Essen. Klartext-Verlag, Essen 2015, ISBN 978-3-8375-1231-1 , p. 153 .

personal data
SURNAME	Kröller-Müller, Helene
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Kröller-Müller, Helene Emma Laura Juliane (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German-Dutch art collector
DATE OF BIRTH	February 11, 1869
PLACE OF BIRTH	eat
DATE OF DEATH	December 14, 1939
Place of death	Otterlo

[1] Erwin Dickhoff: Essener streets . Ed .: City of Essen - Historical Association for City and Monastery of Essen. Klartext-Verlag, Essen 2015, ISBN 978-3-8375-1231-1 , p. 153 .