Broek in Waterland

Painted in 1889 and held by the Indianapolis Museum of Art (now Newfields), 'Broek in Waterland' depicts the characteristic landscape of Broek in Waterland, a village north of Amsterdam in the flat, water-threaded landscape of the Waterland region of North Holland. The Indianapolis Museum's holding of this work reflects the early international dispersion of Toorop's paintings through the European and American art markets of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Waterland landscape — polders, ditches, and flat meadows barely above sea level, with the vast Dutch sky dominant over everything — was a canonical Dutch subject with deep roots in seventeenth-century landscape painting, and Toorop's engagement with it in 1889 connects him to that national tradition even as his stylistic development was moving toward the Belgian Symbolism and international Post-Impressionism associated with Les Vingt. This transitional date — between his earlier naturalist training and his mature Symbolist style — makes this landscape work interesting as evidence of how Toorop navigated his Dutch roots alongside his avant-garde Belgian affiliations. The village of Broek in Waterland itself, known for its historical preservation and distinctive wooden houses, was a popular subject for artists seeking typical Dutch scenery.

Oil on canvas with the horizontal emphasis appropriate to the flat Dutch landscape. The polder landscape forces all compositional interest upward into the vast sky, whose cloud formations become the work's primary visual event. Water in ditches and channels reflects the sky, creating the characteristic Dutch landscape doubling of sky and reflected sky.