Portrait of H.P. Bremmer

When Bertha van Hasselt painted this portrait in 1921, the man sitting for her was one of the most listened-to voices in Dutch art. H.P. Bremmer was an art teacher and critic in The Hague, nicknamed the art pope for the hold his taste had over wealthy collectors. He ran private courses in what he called practical aesthetics, and van Hasselt belonged to his circle of followers.

Since 1907 he had one pupil who mattered more than the rest, Helene Kröller-Müller, wife of a shipping and mining magnate. On his advice she began to buy, and she kept buying for nearly three decades, steered by his eye toward the painter he revered above all others, Vincent van Gogh. The collection they assembled holds the second largest group of Van Gogh's work anywhere in the world.

That is why the portrait hangs where it does. In 1935 the Kröller-Müllers signed their whole collection over to the Dutch state, and three years later a museum opened for it here in the woods at Otterlo. Van Hasselt painted Bremmer at the height of that influence, four years before the gift. He lived until 1956, long enough to see the walls his advice had filled.