Piet Mondrian

View from the Dunes with Beach and Piers, Domburg

1909

Oil and pencil on cardboard

Not on view

This is one of several studies of the seascape at Domburg, The Netherlands, where Mondrian sometimes summered. Here he offers an oblique view of the coastline, depicting dunes on the left, sea on the right, and sky above, rendered in stark orange and blue horizontals. The painting's vibrant coloring and thickly applied lines demonstrate the artist's transition from an earlier naturalism to a period of formal experimentation. Mondrian would later recall that he had preferred to paint "in gray, dark weather or in very strong sunlight, when the density of the atmosphere obscures the details and accentuates the large outlines of objects."

Gallery label from

2008.

Provenance Research Project

This work is included in the Provenance Research Project, which investigates the ownership history of works in MoMA's collection.

Dr. J. F. S. Esser (1877-1946), Amsterdam. By 1913 - 1946
To Esser heirs in 1946 - [1949?]
Private collection, The Netherlands. Acquired at auction c. 1948 - still in that collection as of 1966
E. V. Thaw, New York. 1984 - 1985
Jason McCoy Gallery, New York. 1985
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Purchased from Jason McCoy Gallery through A. Conger Goodyear Fund, December 1985

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Medium Oil and pencil on cardboard
Dimensions 11 1/4 x 15 1/8" (28.5 x 38.5 cm)
Credit A. Conger Goodyear Fund
Object number 479.1985
Department Painting & Sculpture

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Piet Mondrian

Piet Mondrian

Dutch, 1872–1944 30 works online

For Piet Mondrian, abstract painting was the means of achieving an equilibrium between the “concrete” (the tangible and specific aspects of reality perceived by the senses) and the “universal” (the underlying, essential truths that he believed were constant and unchanging).

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