Piet Mondriaan (1872-1944)

The present lot depicts a small barge, nonetheless equipped with a sail, located within a waterway presumably near Amsterdam. This presumption is strengthened by the presence of a rounded tower, upper right along the horizon, which can be identified only as that surmounted by a cupola of the Paleis voor Volksvlijt. Thus the view is from a canal to the south of Amsterdam looking back to the city, which explains the right-hand position of the Paleis voor Volksvlijt, located near the Amstel, at right.
In this painting there is also a smokestack visible at the left along the horizon. Here, again, one can think only of it as belonging to the Royal Wax Candle Factory on the Hobbemakade behind the Rijksmuseum, a building complex and an area well known to the artist since his 1895 residence on the Ruysdaelkade, the bank of the Boerenwetering opposite to that of the Hobbemakade.
In reference to this industrial subject and the impressionist style in which it is executed, one could easily group this painting with similar ship-oriented subjects executed by the artist during the final years of the nineteenth century. (R.P. Welsh, Catalogue Raisonné of the Naturalistic works (until early 1911), Blaricum/Paris 1998, p. 246).