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Rembrandt van Rijn (artist) Dutch, 1606 - 1669 The Mill, 1645/1648 oil on canvas Overall: 87.6 x 105.6 cm (34 1/2 x 41 9/16 in.) framed: 121 x 138.4 cm (47 5/8 x 54 1/2 in.) Widener Collection 1942.9.62 Not on View |
The Mill is one of those few paintings that are significant not only because they are beautiful but because they have profoundly influenced the history of taste. As part of important eighteenth- and nineteenth-century collections, The Mill was well known to connoisseurs and artists who valued it as one of Rembrandt's greatest creations. The romantic aura of the scene, with the dramatic silhouette of the mill seen against the stormy sky, captured their imagination. Many stories and myths circulated about the painting, among them that this was a picture of Rembrandt's father's mill. The dark, threatening sky seemed to others to portend the severe financial difficulties that Rembrandt had in the mid-1650s.
While we may find such interpretations unfounded today, particularly after the blue sky that had been obscured by the discolored varnish was revealed in a recent restoration, the painting still speaks to us as a powerfully expressive work. Rembrandt evokes a feeling of the forces of nature in the dramatic confrontation of the mill against the sweep of the sky. At the same time, the figures within the landscape give it a human element that we can respond to on a personal basis.