Soleil de printemps (Lentezon) : ruines du château de Brederode

Brederode had been a ruin for more than 300 years by the time Mondrian set up in front of it. The castle, in the dunes north of Haarlem, was wrecked in 1573 during the revolt against Spanish rule, and in the 19th century the Dutch state dug it out and shored it up as a patriotic monument, one of the first ruins in the country taken into public care.

He painted it in the winter of 1909 and the early weeks of 1910, in small broken touches of colour. The web of bare branches comes first and the castle appears through it, well back. He was 37, and the year before he had shown at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam alongside two other young painters, in an exhibition the critics went after for its colour.