Sea toward Sunset

Sea toward Sunset is from the artist's time in Zeeland, often around the town of Domberg. He loved the landscape here and produced a number of abstract paintings of the seaside.

He was experimenting with the techniques of pointilism during this period and this suited landscape art. He would lay down tones of colour into the main areas of the composition, and then re-use colours elsewhere as dabs, or spots, which would build up a dotted form of colour. Mondrian uses yellows, blues, whites and pinks in this piece and interlinks them together in a way that may not have been realistic, but provides a more consistent array of colour across the overall composition. This simplistic approach still required great care and attention and many of those from this series may actually have been completed back in his studio, directly from photographs of the area and also perhaps some study drawings too.

Just as with Seascape and Dune Sketch in Bright Stripes, Sea toward Sunset can be found within the collection of the Gemeentemuseum in the Hague, Netherlands. They have obtained a large number of his paintings, mainly some of the more obscure ones, and this collection can really help us to map out the artist's career more accurately and comprehensively. Previously, focus was only really given to his headlining pieces from the Neoplasicist period of his career, such as Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow. Whilst sat on the beach in Domberg, Mondrian used a number of pieces of cardboard on which he would add oils and perhaps did so because of their lighter nature as compared to his other options. Traditionally, oils have normally been used on canvas which is then stretched to complete the artwork, but others have used wood as well.