A Windmill on a Polder Waterway, Known as ‘In the Month of July’

The Rijksmuseum had been in its new building for only four years when, in August 1889, it bought this painting. It was a recent picture by a living painter, entering a museum built to show off Rembrandt and the 17th century. Gabriël chose an odd shape for such a flat country, a canvas taller than it is wide, just over a metre high. That hands most of the picture to the sky. The horizon sits low, with a church spire and a few farm roofs on it, and above it the clouds pile up across well over half the canvas. Down on the ground everything is small. A single man walks the dyke path toward the mill, a cow grazes beside the little house on the opposite bank, and a few birds skim low over the water.