Drydock at Durgerdam c. 1898 - 1899

drawing, gouache, watercolor

drawing

gouache

impressionist painting style

impressionist landscape

handmade artwork painting

oil painting

watercolor

fluid art

acrylic on canvas

painting painterly

watercolour illustration

watercolor

warm toned green

"Drydock at Durgerdam" is a watercolor painting by Piet Mondrian, created around 1898-1899. The artwork captures a tranquil scene of a drydock in Durgerdam, Netherlands, showcasing the artist's early style before his later abstract works. The painting features a boat resting in the drydock, surrounded by buildings and a fence, with a serene waterway in the foreground. The muted color palette and careful brushstrokes emphasize the natural beauty of the Dutch landscape. This work provides insight into Mondrian's early artistic development and his fascination with the natural world, which later influenced his abstract compositions.

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minneapolisinstituteofart about 1 year ago

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Conservation of this watercolor was made possible by a generous contribution from Dena and Al Naylor. Before the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian committed himself to avant-garde abstraction in the late 1910s, and became a leading proponent of nonobjective Neo-plasticism, he was an accomplished landscape painter. This watercolor, executed in his mid-20s, represents a shipyard at Durgerdam, a coastal village seven kilometers east of Amsterdam, and shows boats of various shapes and sizes, including, in the foreground, a sailboat dry-docked for repair. It is a colorful scene, and Mondrian’s interest in geometry seems apparent in his emphasis on line, mostly diagonal and highlighted throughout in white, of the buildings, fences, and boat masts. He depicted this dry-docked sailboat at Durgerdam in at least two other works on paper; the Minneapolis version is the largest and most finished of the three.