On the IJ

By 1890, when Eduard Karsen made this small canvas, the IJ was no longer quite Amsterdam's open door to the sea. The autumn before, in October 1889, the city had opened its new Centraal Station on three man-made islands sunk into the IJ itself, walling the old town off from the water it had faced for centuries. Amsterdammers argued bitterly over it. Karsen was the painter of that disappearing city, working slowly from memory and mood, drawn to quiet corners and failing light while industry rebuilt the town around him. Here he turned to the water, in a picture barely larger than a sheet of paper. For years it hung with Cornelis Hoogendijk, a young Dutchman who was buying Cézanne and Van Gogh when almost no one at home would. It reached the museum in 1911, the year Hoogendijk died.