J.C.B. (JAN) SLUIJTERS 1881 Bois-le-Duc - 1957 Amsterdam Landscape with a Mill
Oil / Canvas: 41,5 x 33 cm
- This artwork can be viewed in our gallery
- Call us for more information: +31 26 361 1876
- World wide shipping available
Details
A remarkable painting from Sluijters' most experimental period. In 1907 he often painted in the vicinity of his house on the Kostverlorenstraat in Amsterdam-West. He became fascinated by the old sawmills, the cluttered factory sites, cottages and sheds, and the water of the canals. Of the many dozens of sawmills that once stood there, only one has survived: mill De Otter on the Kostverlorenvaart. This is the mill we see in the painting. Some surrounding buildings still exist today, so that the location remains recognisable despite all the new construction. The painting was made from the bridge that would later be called the Jan van Galenstraat, over the Kostverlorenvaart. The railings of the bridge have a prominent place in the painting and create a great sense of depth. Sluijters lived less than five minutes away from here. The rapidly changing city was a theme that had already been discovered by the artists of the Hague and Amsterdam Schools at the end of the nineteenth century. It was a favourite subject particularly for Breitner. Sluijters, however, approached it quite differently.
In 1904 he had received the Prix de Rome. This travel grant was intended for copying the art of the old masters in Italy. Sluijters, however, was more interested in the very latest art that could be seen in Paris. The work he sent back in 1906 to the committee that had to decide on extending the grant proved to be strongly inspired by the spontaneous manner of painting and the vivid colours of the modern painters there, such as Toulouse-Lautrec, Derain, Matisse and Van Dongen. The Prix de Rome committee was shocked. They accused Sluijters of, amongst other things, "abandoning all sound artistic principles to embrace the false sophistication of the new French direction, through great contempt for the beauties of painting technique and through a false striving for deliberately new colour harmonies and crude passion".
Sluijters lost his grant but had instantly made a name for himself as a great innovator of painting. Back in the Netherlands he completed the large painting Bal Tabarin (now in the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam), his memory of Parisian nightlife. After Sluijters lost his annual allowance, he could no longer make such ambitious, modern works. His fame did not bring him much, and he could not live from his art. He sold few paintings and earned his living mainly from book illustrations. During this period, he painted mainly small landscapes in which he experimented with new ways of painting. In our painting, which he made in the same year as Bal Tabarin, we recognise a sketchy pointillism that he applied in a free manner. The work is built up from a tangle of dots and strokes, with short dashes in the foreground to broad sweeps in the sky areas. In some places the paint is thickly applied; in others we can see the canvas through the paint.
Sluijters' work was regularly refused at exhibitions. In this year he met the art collector Dr J.F.S. Esser, who did support him and amongst other things bought this painting from him. Esser built up a large collection of Sluijters' work and was crucial for him during this difficult period after his return from abroad
Width: 33 cm
Heirs of Dr. J.F.S. Esser, Amsterdam, 1946 - 2025
The artwork is included to the "Catalogue Raisonné" by the 'Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD) in The Hague
Permalink: https://sluijters.rkdstudies.nl/3-schilderijen-voor-1910/35-1908/
Over J.C.B. (JAN) SLUIJTERS
Jan Sluijters is among the most important Dutch painters of the first half of the 20th century. In 1904, he won the Prix de Rome. Sluijters became familiar with modern French painting in Paris in 1906/1907 and had a decisive influence on his work. Here he came into contact with new movements in art such as Fauvism (Matisse, De Vlaminck, Roualt, Van Dongen) and Luminism (Seurat, Signac). In the years 1906 - 1916 he earned recognition as one of the great innovators of Dutch painting. In the period when Sluijters was one of the most important representatives of Dutch luminism, especially in the years 1907-1911, the subject of woods, trees, avenues and country roads regularly recurred in his work; more than 15 times - as far as is known - this theme was treated by him either separately or combined. The forest scenes from 1907 and 1908 remind us of the compositions and use of color of Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890). The topography, perspective and accurate rendering of trees and foliage dominate the compositions from these years. Due to private circumstances, Sluijters moved to Heeze in Brabant with his girlfriend Greet van Cooten. There he painted a number of exuberant forest scenes, orchards and farms. Color contrasts, divisionist short paint strokes in horizontal and vertical shapes alongside the longer lines of tree trunks characterize the handwriting. Influence, choice of the same subjects and collaboration between Piet Mondrian (1872-1944), Leo Gestel (1881-1941) and Sluijters has been addressed by many authors. Again, the nature studies of trees in non-realistic colors, which are meant to express an expression of the observation of nature, reveal not only similarities but also differences between the three artists. In 1908 Mondrian painted his famous and monumental "Forest near Oele" (collection Haags Gemeente-museum), which particularly emphasizes horizontal and vertical lines in yellow and blue-violet color contrasts. This painting, first exhibited in January 1909 at a joint exhibition of Kees Spoor (1867-1928), Sluijters and Mondrian at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, must have made a great impression on Sluijters. The way the trees in the 1910 "Boschlaantje" are given shape and color attests to this influence, but also to Sluijters' greater emphasis on the more colorful range of colors: blue, violet, yellow, red, black and many varieties of green. Perspective played less and less of a part in forest scenes of 1910 and 1911; in the "Boschlaantje" indicated only by the location of the trees and the short brushstrokes of the road. As in the "Forest near Oele," the trees and crests reach into the sky and conclude the painting at the top. Horizon and foliage flow smoothly into each other. The paintings Sluijters made in 1910 are some of the finest works of his luminist period. Such is the case with "Boschlaantje," in which the interplay of short and long lines, broad and narrow areas of color plays out in an almost abstract manner. Yet Sluijters continues to see the forest through the trees; the composition remains recognizable. Sluijters was not concerned with "the search for effect, to show off colors," as he confided to his painter friend Kees Spoor in 1910, but with expressing in paint "a fiercer sense of superiority of spirit, which is moved by the things that stand above the mere optical perceptible." During 1911, coinciding with his departure from Laren, Sluijters broke with luminism and took a different artistic path.
