Farm Near Duivendrecht, in the Evening

Piet Mondrian

Oil on canvas

Kunstmuseum Den Haag

Farm Near Duivendrecht, in the Evening depicts a farmhouse at dusk near the village of Duivendrecht, outside Amsterdam, rendered in a somber, atmospheric palette with a low horizon, a darkened sky, and the warm glow of light emanating from the farmhouse windows. Mondrian, born in the Netherlands in 1872, returned repeatedly to this motif—producing some twenty known paintings and drawings of the Weltevrede farm between 1905 and 1916—with a notable cluster created during World War I when he was stranded in Holland and unable to return to Paris. The work occupies a pivotal transitional moment in his career, blending the naturalistic landscape tradition of his Dutch forebears with an emerging interest in simplified, flattened forms that foreshadow his later geometric abstractions. Though Mondrian would soon co-found the De Stijl movement and develop his iconic Neoplastic style, this canvas demonstrates that his vision remained deeply rooted in the observed Dutch landscape even as he moved toward pure abstraction.