The Mill
Rembrandt van Rijn·1645/1648
Historical Context
Rembrandt's The Mill (1645–48) at the National Gallery of Art is one of the most celebrated landscapes in Dutch painting, depicting a windmill on a hilltop silhouetted against a dramatic evening sky. The combination of the mill's dark mass against the luminous sky, the reflections in the still water below, and the tiny figures giving human scale create an image that transcends topographic landscape into something more emotionally resonant. The mill's silhouette — stark, geometrically powerful, very different from the naturalistic detail of Dutch landscape convention — creates an image of romantic grandeur unusual in seventeenth-century Dutch painting and anticipating Romantic approaches to landscape a century later.
Technical Analysis
The windmill's dark silhouette against the luminous sky creates a powerful compositional contrast. Rembrandt's handling of the dramatic cloud formations and the subtle reflections in the water demonstrates his mastery of atmospheric landscape, rare in his primarily figure-based oeuvre.
Provenance
Philippe II, duc d'Orléans [1674-1723], Paris; by inheritance to his son, Louis, duc d'Orléans [1703-1752], Paris; by inheritance to his son, Louis Philippe, duc d'Orléans [1725-1785], Paris; by inheritance to his son, Louis Philippe Joseph, duc d'Orléans [1747-1793], Paris; acquired 1792 with the Dutch, German, and Flemish paintings of the Orléans collection by Thomas Moore Slade, London, for an English syndicate;[1] (exhibition and sale [by private contract], The Great Rooms, Pall Mall, London, April-June 1793, no. 91); William Smith, M.P. [1756-1835], until at least 1815;[2] Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 3rd marquess of Lansdowne [1780-1863], Bowood House, Wiltshire, by 1824;[3] by inheritance to his son, Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 4th marquess of Lansdowne [1816-1866], Bowood House; by inheritance to his son, Henry Charles Keith Petty-Fitzmaurice, 5th marquess of Lansdowne [1845-1927], Bowood House; sold April 1911 through (Arthur J. Sulley & Co., London) to Peter A.B. Widener, Lynnewood Hall, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania; inheritance from Estate of Peter A.B. Widener by gift through power of appointment of Joseph E. Widener, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania; gift 1942 to NGA. [1] For the story of the dispersal of the Orléans collection in the 1790s, see William Buchanan, _Memoirs of Painting_, 2 vols., London, 1824: 1:9-216, and Denys Sutton, "Aspects of British Collecting, Part III: XIII The Orléans Collection," _Apollo_ 119 (May 1984): 357-372. [2] Smith lent the painting to an exhibition at the British Institution in 1815. [3] Buchanan 1824, 1:195, 196.
