Jan Weissenbruch, Dutch Landscape with Windmills and Cows, 1880

by Atelier Liesjes

Above a marshy meadow dotted with puddles and tufts of grass stands a large wooden windmill, its sails tilted at an angle, the cap a dark brown against an almost white sky. Next to the mill is a low, white cottage with a thatched roof; to the left, in the distance, a second, smaller mill is turning. In the foreground are cows: a black-and-white spotted one standing and looking at us, a brown one grazing, and two lying stretched out in the mud. Behind them runs a narrow green strip of pasture, bordered by a fence, and beyond that the dark line of a tree-lined dyke. Bare, pollarded willows stretch their branches upwards. The sky takes up two-thirds of the canvas: grey, pearlescent, with the occasional streak of creamy white. Here, Weissenbruch paints with a loose, swift brushstroke and an almost monochrome palette of grey, green and brown, in which the black-and-white cows provide the only sharp contrasts. It is a Dutch polder in gloomy weather, devoid of any anecdote; the windmill, the cows and the sky are each other’s equals. The atmosphere is quiet and somewhat melancholic, as the painters of the Hague School knew it, with great attention paid to the damp atmosphere and the flat landscape. The windmill sails are rendered with a few brushstrokes, the cows with thick, wet paint, and the horizon almost disappears into the sky. The canvas is more of an impression than a description, an observation of the weather and wind on a flat field in autumn. Jan Weissenbruch (The Hague 1822 – The Hague 1880) worked primarily as a city painter, but also produced polder landscapes, dune scenes and watercolours. He was a cousin of Jan Hendrik Weissenbruch, the landscape painter of the Hague School. His signature appears in the bottom right-hand corner. A understated, atmospheric work for a country-style interior.