Piet Mondriaan artwork • painting • previously for sale Calves in the meadow - 'het white bull-calf'
Piet Mondriaan
Amersfoort 1872-1944 New York (Verenigde Staten)
1872-1944
Calves in the meadow - 'het white bull-calf'
oil on canvas laid down on board 31.0 x 39.1 cm, signed l.r. and painted ca. 1905
This painting was previously for sale.
Provenance: B.M. Kramer, Amersfoort, ca. 1956 [?]; veiling Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, 27 maart 1963, lotnr. 39; veiling Christie's, Amsterdam, 8 dec. 1993, lotnr. 221 (met afb.).
Literature: Michel Seuphor, 'Piet Mondrian: Sa vie, son oeuvre', Parijs 1956, pag. 407, cat.nr. 36; Cor Blok, 'Piet Mondriaan: Een catalogus van zijn werk in Nederlands openbaar bezit', Amsterdam 1974, pag. 172, toelichting bij cat.nr. 73; Carel Blotkamp, 'Mondriaan: Destructie als kunst', Zwolle 1994, pag. 29, pag. 33, afb. 14 (in kleur); Robert P. Welsh, 'Catalogue Raisonné of the Naturalistic Works (until early 1911)', Blaricum 1998, pag. 284, cat.nr. A338 (met afb.); Charles M. de Mooij, Maureen S. Trappeniers, 'Piet Mondriaan: Een jaar in Brabant 1904-1905', Zwolle 1999, pag. 60 (met afb. nr. 39); Joost Bergman, Nico de Reus, 'Willem Maris. Impressionist van de Haagse School', Zwolle/Den Haag 2012, pag. 119 (met afb. 136 (in kleur) op pag. 120).
Before Mondrian made the abstract compositions with which he became famous, he drew and painted landscapes, figures, flowers and still-lifes in a naturalist style. Between 1895 and 1908, he gradually detached himself from exact pictorial representation and experimented with colour, composition and a simplifying of forms. This ultimately led to depicting nature in abstract vertical and horizontal lines and planes in primary colours.
© Simonis & Buunk
