The walk around the Molenven fen is pleasant. Parking is available on Bornsestraat.
I made paintings and a drawing of the Molenven fen near Saasveld.
Around 1907, Piet Mondrian made three paintings and a charcoal drawing of a fen near Saasveld. It is thought to be the Molenven, where his friend Albert Hulshoff Pol worked. This isn’t certain, however, because the farmhouses tucked beneath the trees weren’t there in reality. Did Mondrian add them for a dash of local colour? Or did he make these paintings somewhere else?
Atmospheric density
These are naturalistic landscape works that call to mind paintings Mondrian made beside the river Gein showing groups of trees as large, solid masses.
“I preferred to paint landscapes and houses seen in grey, dark weather or in very strong sunlight,” he wrote, “when the density of the atmosphere obscures the details and accentuates the large outlines of objects.”
Study
The large painting Fen near Saasveld can be seen in this context. The charcoal drawing of the same name is likely to have served as a model for it.