Terps, borgs and the pink granite coast: Darling Vincent

Another private art collection: this one at its heart has my favourite painter, Van Gogh, so we made a special journey to visit it.

The Kroller-Muller Museum in Otterlo contains the personal works of art collected by Helene Kroller-Muller, the daughter of a German industrialist who married a Dutchman who became director of her father's company.

Helene became heavily involved in art collection after attending an art appreciation course. The teacher of that course soon became her personal art advisor as she set about acquiring her very large collection of over 11,000 pieces of work.

Her favourite artist was Van Gogh. She collected nearly 200 Van Gogh works, including over 90 of his paintings.

One of my favourites (and one of Vincent's favourites) was The Potato Eaters. This piece Van Gogh painted in his very early Dutch period: the colours deep, dark and gloomy reflecting the mood of the poor peasant farmers who have on their plates to eat, only potatoes. Their faces, noses and fingers, too, are shaped in almost a caricature-potato shape, so involved was Vincent with the shape of the potato as he created this work. The shafts of light and the brilliant contrast of the small patches of white in this work are just amazing.

Helene also collected his Cafe Terrace at Night in the Place du Forum in Arles. This is another of my favourite paintings, the bright bright yellow against the deep dark blue of the sky with the colours all collected in the yellow and blue cobbles of the street by night. When we were last in Arles we stood in exactly the spot where Vincent painted this evocative piece.

Helene's collection of Van Gogh's work is the largest outside of the Van Gogh family collection, so we were able to see works here that we had not seen in Amsterdam, or in other art galleries.

Works we might not ever have seen had Helene not gifted her entire collection to the state during the financial troubles of the 1930s. Her only condition was that they build a museum for the collection. This they proceeded to do and Helene even became its first director: a role she occupied until she died in 1939. Today the museum has been extended and sculpture acquisitions have been included over the many acres of gardens: my favourite being the white floating sculpture in the pond. This is beautiful in form and motion. We had the day walking around this very accessible garden and museum and loved every minute of it.