Stand Well Back and Join the Dots

Georges Seurat was on to something when he moved on from Impressionism to develop the radically different painting technique popularly known as Pointillism. He and his followers applied unmixed dots of pure colour to their canvases, separate little spots of paint that, the theory went, would come together in the eye of the viewer to create glowing, luminous pictures. 

Seurat died young, and Pointillism didn't really hang around for very long either. But it produced some gorgeous art, and 50 or so of its finest creations are gathered at the National Gallery in London in Radical Harmony: Helene Kröller-Müller's Neo-Impressionists. It's a glorious, light-filled, uplifting exhibition, and the most enjoyable show we've been to all year. "Art is harmony," Seurat said, and it's hard to argue with that in this show.

These pictures are Helene Kröller-Müller's Neo-Impressionists, by the way, because more than half of them come from the Kröller-Müller Museum in the eastern Netherlands, set up to house the collection of a woman who took an art-appreciation course at the age of 36 and promptly started acquiring art on a huge scale, amassing 11,500 works by the time of her death in 1939. It scarcely needs to be said that, as the daughter of an industrialist and the wife of a leading businessman, she was one of the wealthiest women in the country.... 

And the first picture you see is one of the earliest Neo-Impressionist paintings she bought in 1912, a view by Paul Signac of Collioure on the French Riviera. Signac placed dots of orange and blue across the canvas to capture the way the light of the Sun created an orange tone that "washes out" the sky.

You can't see the Sun, but you can sense the glare and the heat in this canvas that positively shimmers. It's almost oppressively bright, far more so than a Seurat of Port-en-Bessin in Normandy that hangs alongside. 

Think of Pointillism and landscapes tend to spring to mind first, but the Neo-Impressionists could produce striking light effects for indoor scenes as well. And as you move through this show, you'll see that one artist's dots were by no means the same as another's.

In this next painting by Maximilien Luce (who we saw a solo show of in Paris earlier this year), bright sunlight streams through the roof windows into an attic room. You're quickly distracted from the man and his rumpled bed in the centre of the picture by the numerous shadows and beams of light that add shape and colour to the sparsely furnished room, all in dots, dashes and dabs of paint, quite coarsely applied, it seems.  

The roughness of the paintwork appears suited somehow to the spartan and transitory nature of the accommodation, with what looks like a rather flimsy fold-up bed. 

Seurat and Signac thought that Pointillism was about distillation of form, which wasn't really compatible with the idea of creating a specific likeness in a portrait. But what goes in France doesn't always apply in Belgium, most notably in the work of that country's leading Pointillist, Théo van Rysselberghe, several of whose sparkling portraits are on show here, including this one of the musician Maria Sèthe. 

Van Rysselberghe creates a very different impression, using a more defined dainty dot. Just look at the folds of the dress; you can sense the weight of the cloth. Sadly, this photo does not fully capture the luminosity and light effects and the gorgeous glow of the colours the Belgian is able to conjure up. In another striking painting, the artist's wife, Maria, wears a vibrant orange dress that only fades in reproduction. You'll just have to go and see for yourself....

Seurat's monumental stylised picture of can-can dancers, an orchestra and cabaret spectators -- Le Chahut -- is given centre-stage in this show, catching your eye from a long way off. Painted late in Seurat's short career, it's very much verging on the abstract in its concentration on repetitive shapes. It's an arresting image, but we found ourselves perhaps more drawn to a smaller picture in the same room, one by Henri-Edmond Cross.  

Cross's Bullfight finds you sitting perilously high up in or near the back row of the bullring, looking down on the action in a painting which illustrates how, despite the flatness of their application, dots can create depth, distance and space. Just look at the crowds on the opposite side of the arena.... row upon row of blue spots. Standing in front of it, you definitely sense the ranks of seats receding from the ring side right up to the back. 

Signac brings us back into the home in A Sunday, Opus 201, for a rare example of a Neo-Impressionist work that seems to have a narrative. It appears to be a fashionable residence with elegant furniture, but surely all is not well....

This can't be domestic bliss; the couple with their backs turned on each other. That cat looks decidedly angry. The husband stokes the fire -- is he burning something? -- as his wife looks out at the world beyond -- seeking something? -- and distinctly turning away from her home life.

Things are happier in van Rysselberghe's garden, where the July sun is high in the sky, and it looks very warm indeed, even though it's not yet midday.  

The painter's wife is here, and Maria Sèthe too. What really catches your eye in this picture, conveying the heat, are the patches of dappled sunlight breaking through the leaves of the trees, creating highlights on the bark and on the summer dresses and hats. 

With van Rysselberghe, you do tend to concentrate a bit more on the subject matter than the technique, but with some of the pictures in this exhibition the application of the paint really does take over, particularly when you come across canvases covered in pinhead-size dots, a way of working that seems to have been particularly in vogue in the Netherlands. It's striking to notice how such diminutive dots gave the works a very different feel and light effect. 

This Landscape with Dunes by Johan Aarts is a painting with almost an absence of subject matter, a picture of emptiness. You scarcely notice the buildings hidden behind the trees. Kröller-Müller was much taken by the "light and delicate, spiritual" quality of this type of work.

It seems as if these smaller applications of paint reflect the light more and intensify the works' brightness, though again you can't by any means appreciate the full luminosity of the paintings on the walls in reproduction. This is Sea by Jan Toorop.

There are many more wonderful pictures to be seen in this exhibition; van Rysselberghe's evocative Mediterranean Coastal Scene is a particular highlight, while, just a few minutes walk from the National Gallery, Hungerford Bridge could never have looked as attractive as in Toorop's Bridge in London (Charing Cross). 

A superb show, we thought; don't miss it. 

Practicalities

Radical Harmony: Helene Kröller-Müller's Neo-Impressionists is on at the National Gallery in London until February 8. The gallery is open daily from 1000 to 1800, and until 2100 on Fridays. It's closed December 24-26 and New Year's Day. Full-price adult tickets for this show cost £29.50 including a Gift Aid donation, £27 without. You can book timed-admission tickets here. We spent around 1 3/4 hours in this show, which was well attended when we went at lunchtime in midweek, but not crowded. 

The National Gallery is on the north side of Trafalgar Square, just a couple of minutes from Charing Cross or Leicester Square stations on the rail and Underground networks.

Images

Paul Signac (1863-1935), Collioure, the Belltower, Opus 164, 1887, Collection Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, the Netherlands 
Maximilien Luce (1858-1941), Morning, Interior, 1890, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. © The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource/Scala, Florence
Théo van Rysselberghe (1862-1926), Maria Sèthe at the Harmonium, 1891. © Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp – Flemish Community
Henri-Edmond Cross (1856-1910), Bullfight, about 1891-92, Hasso Plattner Collection, Museum Barberini, Potsdam. © Photo courtesy of the owner

Paul Signac, A Sunday, Opus 201, 1888-90, Private collection  
Théo van Rysselberghe, In July, before Noon, 1890, Collection Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, the Netherlands. © Collection Kröller-Müller Museum
Johan Aarts (1871-1934), Landscape with Dunes, 1895, Collection Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, the Netherlands. © Collection Kröller-Müller Museum; Photographer: Rik Klein Gotink
Jan Toorop (1858-1928), Sea, 1899, Collection Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, the Netherlands. © Collection Kröller-Müller Museum; Photographer: Rik Klein Gotink