Anemones in a vase

Say the name Mondrian and most people picture a white grid boxed in red, yellow and blue. Around 1908, when this vase of anemones was painted, none of that existed yet. He was a Dutch painter in his mid-30s, still working from what was in front of him, and in these years his colour was beginning to brighten as he took an interest in the newer, more luminous painting around him. Flowers stayed with him long after the grids arrived. He painted single blooms and small bunches throughout his life, sometimes selling them when the abstract work would not sell, and he kept a fondness for them even while insisting that art should leave nature behind. This one is close and plain, a few anemones in a vase with little else to distract from them, made more than a decade before the paintings that would carry his name.