Oostzijdse mill viewed from downstream with mill at center

The Oostzijdse Mill in this small canvas was a working machine. It was built in 1874 on the Gein, a narrow river by the village of Abcoude, just south-east of Amsterdam, and its job was to pump water off the low polder land around it so the fields stayed dry. Between about 1902 and 1908 Mondrian painted this one mill more than 20 times, in daylight, at dusk and even by moonlight. For this version he stood downstream, with the mill set in the centre of the view across the water. The museum in The Hague dates the canvas to 1905 or 1906. It came there through Sal Slijper, a broker from Laren who met Mondrian in 1915 and went on to own nearly 200 of his works. Slijper left the whole collection to the city museum, and it arrived after his death in 1971.