photo #6916356

Piet Mondrian was a highly influential twentieth-century Dutch artist, known for his abstract style of simple geometric lines and primary colours. Earlier in his career, however, Mondrian produced impressionist landscapes more typical of the period. These early paintings show he had an understanding of light and colour, an observant eye, and a deep connection to his native country. This work, for instance, titled Windmill in the Evening, depicts a sky filled with the mid-level cloud Altocumulus that shows him to be a fine cloudspotter. The patches, or cloudlets, of the Altocumulus formation are in shadow, like the silhouetted windmill itself, for all are lit on their far sides by the low evening Sun. The edges of the dark windmill are crisp as you’d expect from a solid structure, but those of the clouds above appear radiant and bright compared to their shaded middles. Such silver linings are true to life for Altocumulus clouds in front of the Sun. Their diffuse edges light up as the sunlight shines through and reflects in all directions from the surfaces of their tiny droplets.Windmill in the Evening (1917) by Dutch painter Piet Mondrian, in the collection of the Kunstmuseum Den Haag, the Netherlands.