# Amsterdam Skyline Viewed from the West

- By: Piet Mondrian (Dutch, 1872–1944)
- Date: c. 1899
- Medium: Watercolor, gouache, and fabricated black chalk, with erasures, on cream wove paper
- Classification: Drawing and Watercolor
- Dimensions: 39.9 × 58.8 cm (15 3/4 × 23 3/16 in.)
- Culture: Netherlands
- Credit line: Gift of Dorothy Braude Edinburg to the Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection
- Museum: [Art Institute of Chicago](https://www.artic.edu/artworks/186314)
- Rights: [Public domain (CC0)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/133d4a6e-7be9-a652-f3db-34be49c671c8/full/!1920,1080/0/default.jpg
- Who can see it: Little Ones profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

It is difficult to know precisely when Mondrian made this lyrical landscape. Even after he began to create his better-known abstract work, he still made more salable scenes in order to support himself. Since it bears stylistic similarities to his late-19th-century work, the watercolor probably predates 1900. The Amsterdam skyline appears from the west, as it does often in his pictures from that time. Although the scene is filled with lifelike details, Mondrian seemed to have delighted in the rhythmic placement of the trees. As they reach to the upper edge of the sheet, their reflections extend across the water, punctuated intermittently by coppiced stumps.

Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0