Portrait of Egbert Kuipers (1828-1892) and Jantje Wiegersma (1828-...)

Portrait of Egbert Kuipers and Jantje Wiegersma represents Piet Mondrian's early academic work, painted in 1901 before his development of the abstract style he is now universally known for. Mondrian trained thoroughly in the Dutch portrait tradition and made numerous conventional portraits in his early career to support himself. This double portrait of an elderly couple connects to the long Dutch tradition of paired bourgeois portraiture running from Rembrandt through the Hague School. The Fries Museum in Leeuwarden holds this early Mondrian as evidence of the academic foundation beneath the later radical abstraction.

Mondrian paints in a competent late-Impressionist manner — fluid brushwork, warm tonal palette, and careful attention to the rendering of aged faces. No sign of the geometric abstraction to come; the work is entirely conventional in its approach to likeness and character.