The Wijk bij Duurstede mill

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The mill at Wijk bij Duurstede (Jacob van Ruisdael)
The Wijk bij Duurstede mill
Jacob van Ruisdael , around 1670
Oil on canvas
83 × 101 cm
Rijksmuseum , Amsterdam

The Mill of Wijk bij Duurstede (Dutch title: De molen bij Wijk bij Duurstede ) is the title of a painting by the Dutch painter Jacob van Ruisdael . It was created around 1670 in the artist's late phase. It shows a tower windmill in Wijk bij Duurstede, which no longer exists today . The factory has belonged to the city of Amsterdam since 1885. It is on permanent loan to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam . The painting is one of the most important works of the painter and was represented at many international exhibitions.

description

On the bank of the Lek in the south of the city of Wijk bij Duurstede, a tower windmill with a gallery and a rotating hood rises dominantly, correctly reproduced down to the technical details . It rests on solid brickwork in the form of a cylindrical body and its height towers above all other buildings shown. To the left of the mill you can see the late medieval castle of Wijk, to the right the tower of the Church of St. John with a clock, but still without a belfry, which was built in 1668. Ruisdael seems to have used a preliminary drawing from earlier times for his picture. Today parts of the foundation walls of the mill have been preserved as a museum and suggest a height of over 20 meters. In his otherwise realistic depiction, however, Ruisdael left out remains of the city wall with the Schalkwijker Tor that still existed at the time. In the lower right corner of the picture are two millstones by the water, which were probably delivered by ship. The river bank is populated by several people. Three unmarried women in bright costumes are walking in the direction of the castle, a couple further ahead are also strolling to the castle park with its pavilion. To the left of the center of the picture, five people are busy with two sailing ships on the bank, of which only the masts protrude over the wooden sheet pile wall of the bank reinforcement. People can also be seen on the sailing ship with a dinghy floating in the river on the left edge of the picture. The wind seems to have died down, the sails are barely inflated. Another sailing ship can be seen in the shadows behind it. These ships can be seen as a compositional counterpart to the windmill, which is also dependent on wind power, and is now standing still. In the gallery the miller has just stepped out through a door and is looking into the evening sun. One of Ruisdael's specialties is the exact reproduction of realistic cloud formations, which have a great effect due to the low horizon, also a stylistic device of the painter. The light guidance in the picture is determined by gaps in the cloud cover. In the shallow water in the foreground, with precisely painted, realistic waves, a bright spot lit by the evening sun appears, just as the sun shines on the upper part of the mill with the figure of the miller and the roof of the house. Other bright spots can be seen on the calm water surface of the river in the background. The painting is carried out using the technique of oil on canvas , measures 83 × 101 cm in landscape format and is signed Ruisdael at the bottom right .

interpretation

Windmill as an emblem by Zacharias Heyns from his work Emblemata, emblemes christienes, et morales , 1625

The picture is one of Ruisdael's works in which the windmill is clearly the main focus of the picture. In the slight soffit that the painter took to make the mill appear more monumental, the picture looks like a portrait of a hero . In order to increase this effect, Ruisdael removed another gate from the city wall next to Schalkwijker Tor, the Vrouwen Poort (Frauentor) on the dike. This gate is still shown on a drawing by Wijk bij Duurstede from the 18th century. Ruisdael symbolically replaces it with the three women in white costume, which could have a Christian reference, because there was also a Vrouwen cappel ( chapel for women) on the Wijker dike . As in many paintings of Ruisdael the composition also consists of a placed at an image edge Nahform , so the mill, and a counterbalance in the other half of the picture to the horizon opening towards vision to a remote area.

Commonly, windmills are considered to be the characteristic elements of Dutch landscape painting of the Golden Age . But the image of the mill could also have had a deeper meaning for Ruisdael's contemporaries. The dependence of human well-being on the forces of nature at that time, here the dependence on the wind, was deeply rooted in the consciousness of people and their morals at that time. The windmill often appears as a symbol for this attitude. The Dutch printer and engraver Zacharias Heyns published prints with the title Emblemata, emblemes christienes, et morales in Rotterdam in 1625 . There windmills appear as a symbol for the motto Spriritus vivificat. De letter doot maer den Geeſt maect levendich. (The letter kills, the spirit gives life). The saying comes from the Bible ( 2 Corinthians , chapter 3, verse 6). Other moralists describe the meaning of the windmill with the words Aguntur Spiritu, Ni spriret immota (everything happens through the mind, if it does not breathe, it stands still).

Provenance

The picture was probably sold on August 28, 1817 in Amsterdam by J. Juriaans for 1200 guilders to a vd Schley . The London art dealer John Smith, in turn, presumably sold it on May 2 or 3, 1828 for £ 262.10 to the art dealer and painter Albertus Brondgeest, who in 1833 sold it to the banker and art collector Adriaan van der Hoop for 4,000 guilders. He bequeathed it to the city of Amsterdam in 1854, which has owned it ever since. The painting has been on permanent loan in the Rijksmuseum since June 30, 1885. It bears the Rijksmuseum inventory number SK-C-211.

Exhibitions

The picture has been shown at many international exhibitions.

literature

  • Jacob van Ruisdael: The mill of Wijk (= work monographs on the fine arts in Reclam's Universal Bibliography. 131.) Reclam, Stuttgart 1968, OCLC 26914199 .
  • Hans Kauffmann : Jacob van Ruisdael. The Wijk mill near Duurstede. In: Festschrift for Otto von Simson on his 65th birthday. Grisebach and Renger, Frankfurt am Main 1977, pp. 379-397.
  • Martina Sitt, Pieter Biesboer (ed.): Jacob van Ruisdael - the revolution of the landscape. Zwolle 2002, ISBN 90-400-9606-6 .
  • Seymour Slive: Jacob van Ruisdael - Master of Landscape. Yale University Press, 2006, ISBN 1-903973-74-0 .
  • Seymour Slive: Windmill at Wijk bij Duurstede. Jacob van Ruisdael. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam 2013, ISBN 978-90-71450-85-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Seymour Slive: Jacob van Ruisdael - Master of Landscape. Yale University Press, 2006, p. 11 f. and 123.
  2. ↑ Max Imdahl: Jacob van Ruisdael. The Wijk Mill , Stuttgart 1968, p. 23
  3. ↑ Seymour Slive: Jacob Van Ruisdael: Windmills and Water Mills . Getty Publications 2011, ISBN 978-1-60606-055-1 , p. 28
  4. ↑ Max Imdahl: A contribution to Meindest Hobbemas Allee von Middelharnis (in: Festschrift for Kurt Badt on his seventieth birthday ), Berlin 1961 p. 173 ff. (Quoted in: Martina Sitt (ed.): Jacob von Ruisdael - The Revolution of the Landscape . Zwolle 2002, p. 151)
  5. ↑ Martina Sitt: Jacob von Ruisdael - The revolution of the landscape . Zwolle 2002, p. 72
  6. ^ Seymour Slive: Jacob van Ruisdael - Master of Landscape. Yale University Press, 2006, p. 124.
  7. ^ Hans Kauffmann: Jacob van Ruisdael: The mill of Wijk near Duurstede, commemorative publication for Otto von Simson on his 65th birthday. Grisebach and Renger, Frankfurt am Main 1977, p. 379 ff.
  8. ↑ Jochen Becker in: Martina Sitt (ed.): Jacob von Ruisdael - The revolution of the landscape . Zwolle 2002, p. 145