Amsterdam Skyline Viewed from the West

Description

It is difficult to know precisely when Mondrian made this lyrical landscape. Even after he began to create his better-known abstract work, he still made more salable scenes in order to support himself. Since it bears stylistic similarities to his late-19th-century work, the watercolor probably predates 1900. The Amsterdam skyline appears from the west, as it does often in his pictures from that time. Although the scene is filled with lifelike details, Mondrian seemed to have delighted in the rhythmic placement of the trees. As they reach to the upper edge of the sheet, their reflections extend across the water, punctuated intermittently by coppiced stumps.

Provenance

Sold, Sotheby’s, London, Nov. 29, 1967, lot 72, as "Canal in Holland," to Basil Appleby, London; Basil Appleby, to at least Dec. 1969 [Regina 1969]. Private collection; sold, Christie’s, Amsterdam, May 22, 1990, lot 177, as "Farmer Carting Manure." “A Charitable Foundation"; sold, Christie’s, London, Dec. 1, 1992, lot 129, to Dorothy Braude Edinburg, Brookline, MA.; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, 2013.

Amsterdam Skyline Viewed from the West

Piet Mondrian

c. 1899

Accession Number

186314

Medium

Watercolor, gouache, and fabricated black chalk, with erasures, on cream wove paper

Dimensions

39.9 × 58.8 cm (15 3/4 × 23 3/16 in.)

Classification

prints and drawing

Museum

The Art Institute of Chicago

Chicago, United States

Credit Line

Gift of Dorothy Braude Edinburg to the Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection