Art Institute of Chicago

Amsterdam Skyline Viewed from the West

Piet Mondrian

Date

c. 1899

Medium

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

Culture

Netherlands

Department

Prints and Drawings

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

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.

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