River Landscape with Steeple and Mill

River Landscape with Steeple and Mill (1900), an early Theo van Doesburg, shows him working entirely within Dutch landscape conventions — a river meandering through flat countryside, with a church steeple and windmill providing the characteristic vertical accents of Holland's built horizon. This was standard subject matter for Dutch painters of the period, and van Doesburg's early adherence to it makes his later radicalism all the more striking.

The composition follows established Dutch landscape formula: horizontal emphasis, low horizon, prominent sky. The mill and steeple are painted with careful, somewhat literal attention. The water's surface reflects the sky in the manner of the Hague School painters van Doesburg would have known from his training.