Landscape with willows on the Gein

Landscape with Willows on the Gein (1903), now at the Centraal Museum in Utrecht, is among the most important early works in Mondrian's sustained exploration of the River Gein near Amsterdam. The Gein was one of several waterways near Amsterdam that Mondrian returned to repeatedly in the years around 1900-1907, developing the horizontal polder landscape with pollarded willows into a subject of increasing formal intensity. The rows of willows along the Gein would eventually become the basis for his most radical simplification, reduced in later works to near-abstract arrangements of horizontal water and vertical tree forms. This 1903 work represents an early, still naturalistic stage in that evolution.

The willows along the Gein establish a strong horizontal rhythm punctuated by vertical tree forms. Mondrian's treatment emphasizes the reflective polder water and the wide, low sky typical of the Dutch landscape, with the willows forming a transitional compositional element between earth and sky.