The Lighthouse in Westkapelle

The Lighthouse at Westkapelle is a painting by the Dutch artist Piet Mondrian in the  Kunstmuseum Den Haag. The painting shows the Lighthouse at Westkapelle also called, in Dutch, the Westkapelle Hoog. During holidays in Zeeland, Mondrian made five drawings and paintings of this lightouse. As he did earlier with drawings of the movement of the river Gein, Mondrian investigated the possibilities of different media: from very detailed to very impressionistic. This version from 1908 is the most abstract, giving the appearance of having been completed in a few brief brushstrokes. In reality, Mondrian painted it over a longer period, possibly also after his return after holidays to Amsterdam. After his second stay in Zeeland, he indicated in a letter to the violinist Aletta de Iong aan ‘to make a little progress with some things from Zeeland, which I make entirely to my liking’.

Attribution and provenance
The work is signed at the bottom left with ‘P. MONDRIAAN’. It arrived in the collection of the Kunstmuseum in 1971, a bequest from the collector Sal Slijper.