Théophile de Bock, 'Woudrichem', probably 1890s

Two yachts are moored at the bank of a river in low-lying countryside. It is a windy day. The top of each mast has a flag that blows horizontally, and another boat’s full, tilted sail stands out on the horizon. Turbulent clouds fill the sky. However, the weather is changeable: in the centre of the painting, a brightly lit cloud is caught in the sunlight, with blue sky above it to both left and right. The gaps in the clouds allow the sunlight to reach the ground, bathing the meadow and some of the buildings of the small, fortified town of Woudrichem in the province of North Brabant in the Netherlands. In the middle ground, low-lying structures and trees surround the broad, square tower of St Martin’s church. If it were not for the buildings on the horizon to the left of the painting, we might think we were on the coast. The vast expanse of water in the foreground actually shows where the River Maas flows into the River Waal.

The landscape is painted freely, with broad, scumbled strokes of greys, light browns, whites and even a hint of lilac for the clouds. Finer flicks and dots of paint define the plants and flowers. The use of loose brushstrokes on a small wooden panel suggests that this was a sketch painted by the river’s edge in preparation for a larger canvas, which would have been completed back in the studio. However, the signature in the bottom right corner, ‘Th[éophile] de Bock’, seems to indicate that the artist considered it a finished work of art. By the time it was painted, the landscape’s sketch-like nature would have suggested the authentic experience of a scene that the artist had witnessed and accurately reproduced.

Bock was born and studied in The Hague but went on to spend four years in France, first in the village of Barbizon and then in Paris. Like other members of the late-nineteenth-century Hague School, he painted landscapes in muted colours inspired by the Dutch masters of the seventeenth century. His direct observation of nature and first-hand experience of the paintings produced by the Barbizon School were also key in the development of his style. In 1881 he returned to the Hague, who was himself inspired by seventeenth-century Dutch landscapes. It is hardly surprising that Bock’s Woudrichem, although stylistically a relatively late work, is in some ways still reminiscent of the British artist’s cloud studies and sketches.