Polderlandschap met molens 1908 - 1918

This is Maurits van der Valk’s "Polderlandschap met molens," made with etching. Look at the way he’s built up these dense areas of hatching and cross-hatching. You get a real sense of the artist building up the image through the act of mark making. The muted greens and blues give a somber feel, even a kind of graphic quality to the image. Notice how the clouds are looming in the background. It almost feels like a stage set. There's this little tree in the mid-ground, being blown by the wind; it’s the same tone as the mill, but the application is looser, more gestural. It’s so different from those tight lines used to create the reflections in the water. There’s a nod here to earlier landscape painters, maybe someone like Jacob van Ruisdael, who were similarly obsessed with light, the weather, and the lay of the land. Art is about history and the way we look at it, not just about one picture.