The Windmill at Wijk bij Duurstede

Ruisdael painted this windmill at Wijk bij Duurstede around 1670. He was about 41, the leading landscape painter in the Netherlands, and he had been painting the Dutch countryside for 20 years. This is his most famous painting, and it is one of the most reproduced images in Dutch art. A windmill stands on a low hill beside a river, its sails spread against a sky full of clouds. The mill dominates the composition, its body dark against the luminous sky. Below the mill, a small town stretches along the riverbank, with houses, a church, and a bridge visible. A few small boats lie at anchor in the river. The sky fills more than two thirds of the canvas, with the clouds rendered in thick layers of grey, white, and blue, their shadows falling across the landscape below. The windmill at Wijk bij Duurstede was a real mill, on the Lek river east of Utrecht. Ruisdael probably saw it on one of his travels through the Netherlands, though he may have worked from drawings rather than painting on the spot. The mill no longer exists, but the town of Wijk bij Duurstede still stands on the same bend in the river, and the view across the water is recognizable today. Ruisdael was born in Haarlem in 1629, the son and nephew of painters. He trained in Haarlem and moved to Amsterdam in the 1650s. He painted landscapes exclusively: dunes, forests, rivers, mills, and winter scenes. His paintings are more dramatic than most Dutch landscapes, with heavier skies, darker shadows, and more varied terrain. He was the most influential Dutch landscape painter, and his work shaped the way later artists, including Constable and the Barbizon School, saw the natural world. Oil on canvas, 83 by 101 centimeters, roughly 33 by 40 inches. Ruisdael painted with a rich, textured surface, building the sky in thick layers of impasto. The clouds are rendered with broad strokes of white and grey, their forms solid and sculptural. The mill is painted in dark browns and blacks, with the sails described in thin lines against the sky. The river and the town are painted more thinly, with the reflections in the water rendered in vertical strokes of color. The horizontal format and dramatic sky make this print work well in a living room or dining room with traditional furniture. The Dutch landscape subject suits a room with warm-toned walls. A dark wood frame matches the painting's tonal range. The 16x20 or 18x24 size gives the mill and the clouds enough detail to appreciate up close. The painting is in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, one of the museum's most famous works. This is a public domain artwork. We print it on archival matte paper at sizes from 8x10 to 18x24 inches, framed or unframed. The image is printed at full resolution with no cropping.