Near the ox stall, Hilvarenbeek

Near the Ox Stall, Hilvarenbeek (1904), at the Kunstmuseum Den Haag, places Mondrian's animal subjects within a specific topographic and functional context: the farmyard near the shelter where cattle were kept. Hilvarenbeek is a village in North Brabant, and the identification of this location suggests Mondrian was working systematically through the farms and countryside of a specific area, building a body of work rooted in a particular landscape. The ox stall as a setting grounds the animal subject in the working agricultural life of the Brabant farm, connecting the painting to a tradition of farmyard subjects in Dutch art.

The near-the-stall setting constrains the composition: the animals are seen in proximity to architectural elements—the stall structure, farm buildings—which provide geometrical counterpoints to the organic forms of the cattle. Mondrian integrates these elements with his characteristic observational directness.