by Tom Gurney
Tom Gurney BSc (Hons) is an art history expert with over 20 years experience
Published on June 19, 2020 / Updated on September 28, 2026
Email: tomgurney1@gmail.com / Phone: +44 7429 011000
About the painting
A red trunk rises from a low band of earth and spreads into a dense crown of twisting branches. Behind it, the sky is not a quiet backdrop but a field of vivid blue crossed by dark and red marks. Piet Mondrian's Avond (Evening): The Red Tree is still unmistakably a picture of a tree. Yet its colour and restless surface take it far from a straightforward record of one seen outdoors. Kunstmuseum Den Haag dates the oil painting 1908–1910, gives its size as 70 × 99 cm, and holds it as object 0332041.[1]
The title may also appear as Evening in the RKD catalogue, where the painting is A671. Those are names for the same oil, not two separate red-tree pictures. Its preparatory drawings have their own catalogue entries. Getting that distinction right helps us see the painting as a worked-out experiment: Mondrian used a recognizable apple-tree form while giving the relations among red, blue, branching line and the edge of the canvas unusual force.[2]
At a glance
- ArtistPiet Mondrian (Piet Mondriaan, 1872–1944)
- TitleAvond (Evening): The Red Tree; Evening in the RKD catalogue
- Date1908–1910
- MediumOil on canvas
- Dimensions70 × 99 cm (height × width)
- CollectionKunstmuseum Den Haag, The Hague
- Museum object number0332041; inventory 17-1933
- Catalogue raisonnéJoosten A671; separate from the A669 and A670 studies[1][2]
Where this painting sits in Mondrian's career
Contents
- What do you see in The Red Tree?
- Annotated details in Evening: The Red Tree
- Was the tree at Domburg a real tree?
- Are there preparatory studies for the painting?
- Why are the red and blue so striking?
- How does it relate to Gray Tree and Flowering Apple Tree?
- Where is the original painting now?
What do you see in The Red Tree?
Look first at the point where the trunk meets the ground. The red form climbs sharply, then bends and divides. Thick dark limbs move out to both sides; finer lines and short strokes cross the spaces between them. The tree occupies nearly the whole width of the horizontal canvas. Its outer branches approach the upper and side edges, making the image feel full even though the central subject is a single tree.
Red does not sit neatly inside an outline. It runs up the trunk, traces parts of the larger limbs, and appears again among smaller branches and near the ground. Dark blue and near-black lines overlap those red paths. The sky, painted in strong blue, remains visible between the branches, so each fork frames another patch of colour. The eye can follow a red line from the base outward, lose it in the dark crown and pick it up again elsewhere. That movement is part of the painting's energy.
Near the lower edge, small dabs of red, blue and lighter paint spread across the earth. They keep the base from becoming a solid platform under the tree. Above it, long lines curve, bend back and cross one another. The contrast between small touches below and branching strokes above gives the surface several tempos. No single dark shadow fixes the tree in a conventional, deep landscape space. Instead the close cropping and active background hold our attention on what happens across the painted plane.
The reproduction on this page is modest in size, so it cannot settle technical questions about individual paint layers. We can describe the visible meeting of colours and marks; we cannot infer from it a reliable sequence in which Mondrian laid down dark lines and red strokes. What is clear is the deliberate strength of the palette. The museum describes a fiery red and cobalt-blue colour experiment, a departure from the more naturalistic appearance of Mondrian's earlier landscapes.[1]
Annotated details in Evening: The Red Tree
Look closely at the red trunk, branching lines, blue openings and broken ground of this early tree painting. Select a number to jump to a detail.
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Choose a number to reach its detail, then select a detail image to open the gallery. Open the full-resolution image.
Details from EVENING: THE RED TREE
Five close views of the painting.
The red trunk climbs
Red runs up the trunk and forks into dark limbs. Its brightest passages stand out against the cooler field behind it.
Branches sweep toward the left
Dark, curved limbs reach outward, while shorter red strokes interrupt them. Blue remains visible through the gaps.
Blue fills the openings
The space between the upper branches is intensely blue. Small warm marks and dark lines prevent it from becoming a flat backdrop.
The right canopy thickens
Several branches overlap on the right. Red and near-black strokes cross the blue, making the edge of the canopy restless.
Small marks animate the ground
Near the base, short red, blue and pale marks spread beneath the tree. They contrast with the long, curving strokes above.
Was the tree at Domburg a real tree?
Kunstmuseum Den Haag links the subject to Mondrian's visits to Domburg, the Zeeland seaside town. Its account says he stayed there for a week in September 1908 and returned during the next four summers. He visited Villa Loverendale, the summer home of collector Marie Tak van Poortvliet and the painter Jacoba van Heemskerck. A very old, broad apple tree grew in its garden until the 1980s. The museum suggests that Mondrian may have drawn the first version of The Red Tree there.[1]
That is a useful setting, but the museum's wording leaves room for doubt. The tree in the painting should not be treated as a botanical portrait proven to depict one surviving, documented specimen. Nor does the Domburg connection show that the finished canvas was painted entirely in front of the tree. The museum says Mondrian began the painting in 1908 and continued working on it until 1910. The long date range belongs to the history of making this oil, while the villa offers a plausible starting point for the motif.[1]
There is also a possible contemporary exhibition anchor. A. B. Loosjes-Terpstra compared a critic's description of a tree painting titled Avond at the spring 1910 St. Lucas exhibition with this red tree and judged the identification likely. The review described a tree isolated against a strikingly blue, moonlit sky. This is evidence for a plausible public showing before April 1910, not a surviving object label that proves beyond doubt which Avond the critic saw. The possibility sits comfortably with the museum's account of a canvas developed across 1908–10.[6]
The difference matters when looking at the image. Mondrian could observe a trunk's bend and the reach of its limbs, then make choices that served the canvas. The branches here spread almost to its boundaries, and the blue spaces among them are as prominent as the tree's solid form. The result can retain the memory of a particular place while refusing to behave like an ordinary landscape view with a detailed location behind the subject.
Domburg was part of a broader period of experiment, not an isolated trip that explains every feature in the painting. The museum's account places the work among landscapes in which Mondrian made line and colour increasingly independent of natural appearance. We can see that claim at work without assigning a symbolic meaning to every branch. The tree offers a structure Mondrian could recognize, repeat and transform.[1]
Are there preparatory studies for the painting?
Yes. RKD places a 1908 preliminary study, catalogue A669, before the oil painting A671. Kunstmuseum Den Haag holds that study as object 0631553 and describes it as black chalk and charcoal on paper, 31 × 44 cm. It is a separate work that a reader can find in the museum's study record. RKD also lists a final study, A670, dated 1908 and held in a private collection. These entries identify stages of working with the motif; they are not alternative catalogue numbers for the oil.[2][3]
The black chalk and charcoal study is especially helpful because its medium makes a simple colour-based explanation impossible. A drawing can investigate the sweep of a trunk and the spread of branches without telling us which blue or red Mondrian had already selected for the canvas. The existence of the studies supports a considered arrangement. It does not prove exactly how many times the painter revised the oil, what each earlier painted state looked like, or the order of its final brushstrokes.
Readers comparing the works should keep their records distinct. The preliminary sheet measures 31 × 44 cm; the oil measures 70 × 99 cm. The drawing's museum number is 0631553; the painting's is 0332041. A670 belongs to a private collection according to RKD, and the catalogue listing alone does not establish its medium or public access. These practical identifiers matter because Mondrian made several pictures and studies of trees in closely related years.[1][2][3]
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Watch on YouTubeWhy are the red and blue so striking?
The museum calls the combination of fiery red and cobalt blue a marked break with Mondrian's earlier, more naturalistic painting. Red draws attention to the tree, but blue does more than make the red brighter. It comes forward through the mesh of branches, giving the negative spaces their own presence. Across the top of the canvas, the two colours seem to compete for attention. At the bottom, their shorter touches help bind tree and ground together. The painting depends on both colours, and on the dark strokes that turn contrast into a branching rhythm.[1]
We need not decide whether the red records a real sunset, autumn foliage or an imagined light effect. The title gives us Evening, and the museum describes the importance of light in Mondrian's thinking. Its account also relates a recollection by his friend Louis Saalborn: on a walk in Amsterdam in 1910, evening light made buildings appear red beneath blue roofs and prompted Mondrian to speak admiringly of red branches. That story is evidence of how he responded to colour in the world. It is not proof that this particular canvas depicts the street scene or one precisely dated hour at Domburg.[1]
Kunstmuseum Den Haag also compares the painting's energy to Vincent van Gogh. It notes that later Van Gogh works were shown in Amsterdam in autumn 1908 and interprets his example as encouragement for Mondrian to isolate motifs such as a tree or lighthouse. That is a museum interpretation of artistic context, not a record of Mondrian copying a specified Van Gogh painting. Both the vivid colour and the concentrated single subject make the comparison useful, while the shape and internal balance of this tree remain Mondrian's own pictorial decisions.[1]
Such intense colour can make the painting feel emotionally charged. A viewer may experience agitation, warmth or exhilaration in the crossing branches. These reactions need not be presented as Mondrian's documented private feelings. The more precise account is visible: he heightened a familiar form through opposing colours, tight framing and a surface in which sky and tree continually meet. Those are the choices that make the painting memorable.
How does it relate to Gray Tree and Flowering Apple Tree?
Tree paintings offer a way to follow Mondrian's changing methods without turning every work into a mere step toward his later straight-line compositions. RKD catalogues several blue apple-tree works around 1908 and places A671 among those experiments. In The Red Tree, the trunk and broad canopy remain plain to see, and brilliant colour holds them against the sky. Later canvases ask different things of the same broad motif.[2]
In Gray Tree, painted in 1911, the boughs still curve across a wide surface. Its grays, black and near-white, however, draw tree and surroundings closer together in tone. Kunstmuseum Den Haag describes that canvas as a reduction of the subject toward line and structure, made before Mondrian moved to Paris in January 1912. Compare the red picture's immediately contrasting trunk and sky with the gray one's more difficult boundary between branch and background. The difference is observable; it does not require saying that Mondrian abandoned nature all at once.[4]
The museum dates Flowering Apple Tree to 1912 and records it as another oil on canvas. Its network of marks can be compared with the earlier branch pictures, but it is a separate object, 0332113, measuring 78.5 × 107.5 cm. Those facts should not be attached to The Red Tree. Looking among the three images can show how one natural theme accommodates sharply different treatments of colour, line and pictorial space.[5]
It is tempting to call The Red Tree a beginning, Gray Tree a middle and Flowering Apple Tree an endpoint. That shorthand hides the particular decisions in each picture and the many other landscapes Mondrian worked on in those years. The red tree's dense, spreading crown is worth looking at on its own terms: a subject that remains legible while the colour and marks begin to operate with their own force.
Where is the original painting now?
The oil painting belongs to Kunstmuseum Den Haag. Its object number is 0332041, and RKD records the inventory designation 17-1933. The museum's direct collection record is the best starting point for current information about the object. Collection ownership does not establish whether it is on display on the day of a visit, so check the museum's current arrangements before travelling specifically to see it.[1][2]
The work matters because it shows Mondrian testing the expressive reach of a familiar subject long before he became known for rectilinear grids. A tree can be identified at once; closer looking reveals a painting organised by crossing movements and a forceful opposition of colour. The documented studies, extended 1908–10 working period and later tree pictures make that experiment easier to place, but they do not take away its immediate visual impact.
Mondrian artworks directory
Frequently asked questions
When did Mondrian paint The Red Tree?
Is Evening a different painting?
Was the tree at Villa Loverendale?
The museum suggests that Mondrian may have drawn the first version by the old apple tree in Villa Loverendale's garden at Domburg. It does not present that identification as certain or say the entire oil was painted there.[1]
Are the studies the same artwork?
How large is The Red Tree?
The museum records the painting as 70 cm high and 99 cm wide, in oil on canvas.[1]
Discussion
Where does the red trunk seem to end and the blue background begin for you?
Reader Insights
Follow one red branch from the trunk outward. Where does it disappear into darker lines?
Which patches of blue appear closest to the tree, and which seem farther away?
How does this red tree change what you notice in Gray Tree or Flowering Apple Tree?
Join the Conversation
Share what you notice in this painting below.
References
- Kunstmuseum Den Haag, collection record for Piet Mondrian, Avond (Evening): The Red Tree, object 0332041. View source.
- RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art History, Mondrian catalogue raisonné, Amsterdam 1908–11 landscapes, entries A665–A673 including A669–A671. View source.
- Kunstmuseum Den Haag, collection record for Voorstudie voor Avond; De rode boom, object 0631553. View source.
- Kunstmuseum Den Haag, collection record for The Grey Tree, object 0334314. View source.
- Kunstmuseum Den Haag, collection record for Flowering Apple Tree, object 0332113. View source.
- A. B. Loosjes-Terpstra, Moderne kunst in Nederland 1900–1914, “Het werk,” p. 77, comparing the contemporary St. Lucas review of Avond with the red tree and presenting the identification as probable. View source.
- Lead and annotated image credit. Piet Mondrian, Avond (Evening): The Red Tree, 1908–10. Kunstmuseum Den Haag, object 0332041. High-resolution reproduction supplied by the site owner as public domain.
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