The Windmill
Oil on board, 15-7/8 x 30 in. (40.3 x 76.2 cm), signed “EilshemiuS-“ (lower right) and dated “1918” (lower left), bearing an old label on the reverse with designation “109 L-A” and title “figure w/boat, windmill by sea,” in a gilt frame 20 x 34 x 2 in. overall.
In very good condition, thinly painted in glazes with exposed areas of board and show of lines from board, the old varnish yellowed, some surface soiling.
This sketch-like composition has a sophistication and elegance which belies its first impression of simplicity. The later paintings, including, for example, Tragedy of the Sea (Found Drowned), 1916, The Haunted House, 1917 (both Metropolitan Museum of Art), and Evening Light by the Sea, 1918 (Phillips Collection), are the true embodiments of the artistic genius which Eilshemius shares with Blakelock and Ryder. With its minimalist palette of brown, yellow, white and black with touches of green and blue, the present work bears comparison with the best of the tonal phase of the golden age of Dutch landscape (e.g., Jan van Goyen, A Windmill by a River, 1642, National Gallery, London), recalling, backwards, the tinted panoramas of Hercules Seghers and, laterally, Rembrandt’s The Mill, 1645-8 (National Gallery of Art, Washington), a strikingly similar conjunction of figures and boat with a haunting sweep of water and sky. Thus we can see Eilshemius’s “rare tragic poetry of high romanticism, often concerned with mortality” (John Gernard, Appreciations: Louis Eilshemius, Phillips Collection, 1982).
Provenance:
Joseph H. Hirshhorn (inv. no. P.357.74 and inscribed “J.H.H.”
and “JHH PERSONAL” on back of board);
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (inv. no. 86.1681 on back of frame),
deaccessioned 2009.
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Price: $4,500
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