Mill in Holland

A giant windmill dominates this 1904 painting by Wassily Kandinsky, its four sails reaching out to fill nearly the entire canvas against an almost black sky. Painted during a trip to the Netherlands, "Mill in Holland" captures a slice of ordinary Dutch country life. Neat little houses run along the left edge, laundry flaps in the breeze, and a wide field scattered with tiny flowers rolls out toward us in dabs of green and gold. The mood is calm and rooted in the everyday, a far cry from what Kandinsky is best known for today.

That contrast is exactly what makes this piece worth a second glance. Years before he became a pioneer of abstract art, Kandinsky worked in the dotted, flickering manner of the Pointillists and Post-Impressionists who were popular back then. The dark sky here is stitched together from dozens of small clouds, and the meadow seems to sparkle with countless tiny specks of paint. Even in this quiet windmill scene, you can spot his growing curiosity about how tiny marks and pockets of color can build feeling and motion. It would only take a handful of years for him to chase that idea all the way into pure abstraction, dropping familiar subjects like this old Dutch mill for good.