Lighthouse in Westkapelle

The tower in this picture was already more than four centuries old when Mondrian painted it. It was built as the tower of the church of Saint Willibrord in Westkapelle, on the Zeeland coast, and came into use in 1470. In 1818 a lantern was fitted on top and it became a lighthouse, and when the church burned down in 1831 the tower was left standing on its own, about 50 metres high. Mondrian knew it from his summer stays in nearby Domburg, and the museum dates this small canvas to 1909 or 1910. He crops tightly around the tower and builds the brick out of short strokes of pink and orange against a sky brushed in streaks of blue. The painting came to the Kunstmuseum Den Haag in 1971 with the bequest of Salomon Slijper, an estate agent from Laren who got to know Mondrian in 1915 and left the museum nearly 200 of his works.