Landschap met de molen van Wijk bij Duurstede

Willem Witsen's 'Landschap met de molen van Wijk bij Duurstede' (Landscape with the Mill of Wijk bij Duurstede, 1904) depicts one of the most celebrated Dutch landscape sites — the windmill at Wijk bij Duurstede on the Lek River immortalized by Jacob van Ruisdael in his famous seventeenth-century painting. Witsen's engagement with this canonical Dutch landscape subject created a dialogue with the greatest landscape painter of the Dutch Golden Age, his atmospheric approach bringing his own specific sensibility to a subject already deeply embedded in Dutch cultural consciousness.

Witsen renders the Wijk bij Duurstede landscape with the atmospheric sensitivity and tonal restraint of his mature work — the great mill and its landscape setting captured with the Dutch quality of diffused light and the specific character of the Lek River's wide floodplain. His handling of the sky (dominant in this flat landscape composition) and its reflection in the river creates the atmospheric unity that distinguished his best landscape work. The dialogue with Ruisdael's famous treatment is implicit in his engagement with the same iconic site.