Jacob Maris, A Windmill and Houses beside Water: Stormy Sky

This painting is typical of the views of the Dutch countryside that Jacob Maris produced throughout his career. A single windmill provides the only interruption along the flat horizon in a picture that is dominated by a stormy sky – the painting previously had the title La Tourmente (‘Turmoil’ or ‘Turbulence’). This is a good example of Maris’s late work, when he had moved away from the smooth finish of his earlier paintings and had developed a looser, sketchier style using thick, often impasto, paint and broad visible brushstrokes.

The stormy sky perhaps provides an explanation for the water below, as we may be looking at floodwater that threatens to engulf the landscape. Although Maris’s choice of a very low horizon follows the example of Dutch painters, such as Jan van Goyen and Jacob van Ruisdael, it also serves here to emphasise the precariousness of the low-lying land, much of which had been reclaimed from the sea.