Water Mill at Gennep

In the autumn of 1884 Vincent van Gogh was living with his parents in the Brabant village of Nuenen, walking out with his paints to the old watermills within reach of the parsonage. He painted this two-wheeled mill on the little river Dommel at Gennep outdoors in the cold of November. At this point van Gogh still worked in the dark, earthy tones of the 17th-century Dutch masters and the Barbizon painters he admired, years before the blazing colour of Arles. Yet he was already testing something new, laying small separate touches of purer paint on the water and the mill. A pupil of his, Anton Kerssemakers, remembered watching him at the easel here.