Rivierlandschap met twee torens en een zeilboot 1926

Antoon Derkzen van Angeren made this small landscape painting with soft, pale pigment, probably on panel, and I’m really drawn to it. It’s almost monochromatic; it seems to me, with the barest detail of a boat and some spiky grasses near the shore. There's a quietness here, which makes me think about how the artist might have been feeling at the time. Was he trying to capture a fleeting moment, a memory of a place he loved? Or was he simply experimenting with the possibilities of brown, seeing how much he could evoke with so little? The paint is very thin, which gives the whole scene an ethereal quality. The horizon line is blurred, and the sky seems to merge seamlessly with the water. This reminds me of some of the tonalist painters from the late 19th century, artists like James McNeill Whistler, who were also interested in mood and atmosphere. It's all about the experience, not the thing itself.