Polder landscape with irrigation ditch and two cows

This 1901 Mondrian depicts the polder landscape at its most archetypal: an irrigation ditch running through flat pasture, two cows grazing, the sky reflected in the still water. The motif is indistinguishable from hundreds of seventeenth-century Dutch landscape paintings, and Mondrian's engagement with it is a deliberate act of connection to his national tradition. Yet his handling already shows awareness of Post-Impressionist technique, and the structural clarity with which he organizes the composition reveals a pictorial intelligence that would eventually arrive at pure abstraction. The Kunstmuseum Den Haag holds this and dozens of related works.

The composition is classically horizontal, with the ditch occupying the lower register and the sky the upper two-thirds. Two cows provide scale and warmth. The cattle are painted with direct, economic brushwork; the water surface is given particular attention, with reflections rendered in fluid, varied strokes.