Jakob Smits, Windmill in the Kempen, 1923

by Atelier Liesjes

To the right of centre stands a windmill, its four sails reaching up into the sky. The body is made of dark, green-painted wood, rests on a brick base and is topped with a small, black, thatched cap; at the front, a wooden staircase leads up to the platform, with a small, attached loft beside it. The sails are a light ochre, almost yellow, and stand out sharply against a pale, milky-white sky in which a faint sun disc hangs to the left of centre. To the left in the foreground lies a large haystack in brown and yellow, with a low house and a dark tree behind it. At the foot of the mill, two small figures sit on the ground, dressed in dark clothes, huddled together against the wind. The surrounding countryside is flat and greenish-brown, with a low horizon of trees and bushes. A few scattered, grey wisps of cloud still drift on the horizon. Smits adopts a low viewpoint, so that the mill towers above the viewer and the sky appears as an empty, clear expanse behind the sails. The paint is thinner here than in his early work, the brushwork more subdued; the mill is built up from transparent layers of brown and green, with the occasional accent of yellow on the sails. It is a romantic depiction of a vanishing craft, without becoming nostalgic: the building is, above all, a form in the light. The sails stand still, and there is no movement in the picture, only the wind that one senses.
Jakob Smits (Rotterdam 1855 – Mol 1928) painted the windmills and farmhouses of the Kempen region dozens of times, often from his own surroundings in Achterbos. He was the linchpin of the Mol School and a bridge between nineteenth-century realism and modern Belgian painting. A monumental, tranquil work for a rural interior.