De Lek

De Lek — The Lek River — painted around 1900, depicts one of the major distributaries of the Rhine as it crosses the Dutch landscape toward the sea. The Lek was a working river — carrying commercial traffic, defining the boundaries of polders, shaping the character of the river villages along its banks — and Witsen's engagement with it connects his work to the Dutch tradition of river landscape painting stretching back to the seventeenth century. The flat, wide river with its low banks and enormous sky was a characteristically Dutch subject that allowed a painter to demonstrate facility with atmospheric light and reflective water.

The Lek's broad expanse gives Witsen a composition dominated by sky and water reflection, with a narrow strip of bank and distant elements providing the only terrestrial grounding. His handling of the Dutch river atmosphere — the way moisture softens distance and merges sky with water — is characteristically accomplished.