Kromme Waal met schepen, Amsterdam

Kromme Waal met schepen, Amsterdam — Kromme Waal with Ships, Amsterdam — painted around 1902, is one of several views of the curved wharf that Witsen painted in different conditions and seasons. By 1902 he had been painting the Kromme Waal area for several years and knew it intimately, able to identify the precise moment of light or weather that made a new painting worthwhile. The ships moored along the Kromme Waal were working vessels in the city's diminishing canal freight trade, their presence giving the canal scene its social and economic grounding.

The ships' dark hulls and rigging create vertical punctuation along the canal's horizontal extent, Witsen using the masts and their reflections to structure a composition that could otherwise read as featureless. His water handling here shows accumulated skill — the broken reflections of hull, sky, and building rendered with varied directional brushwork.