Piet Mondrian (1872-1944)

The present work is closely related to Aan Ouderkerkerdijk bij de Omval (Welsh, no. A528) and Aanmeren van dokken bij de Omval (Welsh, no. A530), although painted at differing times of the day. According to Robert P. Welsh, the Ouderkerkerdijk had an irregular embankment “festooned with jetties and mooring poles used by the local fishing population…Similar riverscape scenery could be found throughout the Netherlands… [In the present painting the artist] continued to work within an established Dutch tradition of subject matter and style, but that he ruled out any depiction of picturesque human activity in favor of more purely painterly experiments with brush technique, color contrasts and compression of space” (op. cit., p. 363).