Moinho de água em Opwetten

This is early Van Gogh, painted in November 1884 in the Dutch village of Nuenen, where he was living with his parents and teaching himself to work in oils. He had gone out to this watermill at Opwetten that spring with his friend the painter Anthon van Rappard, and it was one of several old mills in the area he turned into pictures. There is no bright colour here yet. It is all browns and greys, the heavy Dutch light he grew up with, the same palette he would use a few months later for The Potato Eaters. Van Gogh had roughly six years left to live and had not yet seen Paris or the Impressionists who would transform his work. The mill itself still stands, and now houses a restaurant.