Explorations in Gelderland I

Park and Museum, Nature and Culture

We set out for a drive around the eastern province called Gelderland, heading for the Hoge Veluwe National Park. This is a part of the Netherlands where open meadows and forests co-exist and this park has both in roughly equal measure. Our expecation was that we would feast (once more) on nature's beauty.

When we arrived at the Park, however, we made a spontaneous decision to spend time at the Kroller-Muller Museum which is housed there. This museum has the second largest collection of Van Gogh's paintings after the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Some famous paintings that hang here are Terrace of a café at night, The potato eaters, Bridge at Arles and Pink peach trees, but really there are over two hundred as you can see from the online catalogue.

In addition, the museum has an amazing collection of modern art, where modern is anything from the late 19th century through the 20th. Some pieces that caught my untrained eye:

• The Tempest by Bart van der Leck


• The Sea by Jan Toorop


• Guitar by Pablo Picasso


• Transport of colonial soldiers by Isaac Israels

Others that I liked, such as the Johannes Thorn Prikker's Madonna in Tulipland, are not in the catalogue. You will just have to visit this museum yourself to see them!

As a complete ignoramus of the "I know when I see something I like"variety, I have to say that the phrase that worked through my head as I looked at Van Gogh's works was 'disaggregated reality.' Some of it was too dark for me. Some of it was too frenzied. On the whole, I just did not like it very much and moved on quickly. But here's the thing: when that same disaggregation continues to the point of abstraction, sometimes I find it very appealing. And darkness of colour, if not mood, does not fail to catch my eye. Maybe art does convey state of mind and if you are sensitive to any degree, you move away from that which is disturbed and therefore, disturbing.

As we came out of the galleries, I took a photograph that illustrates how important museums are to the cultural life of this country, which actually has several days in the year when access to museums is free and where people visit museums for fun. Well, if you have great and user-friendly museums, I guess it's no wonder.