Dune Sketch in Bright Stripes

Mondrian continues his focus on the natural landscape of Zeeland in the early 20th century with this painting titled, Dune Sketch in Bright Stripes.

He spent several summers in this region, enjoying the relative tranquility found within this flat and fairly simple landscape. The artist was offered a number of stunning spots from which to work and was also joined here by a number of other forward-thinking artists who between them built a positive, creative environment in which to work. Many of his scenes here were made using a pointilist style, but in this painting he made use of longer, thicker brushstrokes which reduces detail ever further. Whilst those in this series do not rank as the most important in his lifetime, or the most famous, there is a growing interest in the work that he produced in this region and a greater acceptance that he was not just an abstract painter of lines and shapes, as he would later become.

Dune Sketch in Bright Stripes was finished in 1909 and is relatively small at 40cm wide by 30cm tall. The dimensions are typical of landscape art, but to use oils of cardboard was slightly unusual. This may have been a choice more to do with portability and travel rather than an artistic desire to work with this medium. Anyway, this piece was eventually a part of the collection of the Gemeentemuseum in the Hague, Netherlands, where it is joined by a good number of Mondrian's other landscape paintings, making it a great venue for those looking to understand more about this artist. This particular series serves to remind us of the beauty of the region of Zeeland.