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 29, 2026
Email: tomgurney1@gmail.com / Phone: +44 7429 011000
About the painting
Tall trunks stand like dark verticals before a forest interior alive with violet, blue, orange and yellow. Piet Mondrian's Woods near Oele is a large 1908 oil painting in Kunstmuseum Den Haag, object 0334284. The collecting museum also titles it Bosch (Woods); Woods near Oele and explains its striking colour and unusually active brushwork. RKD lists this Hague canvas as A593, under the shorter title Woods. A separate catalogue entry, A592, also bears the name Woods near Oele; the matching museum number and image are what make A593 the correct identification for this page.[1][2]
At a glance
Mondrian’s colour experiments around 1908
Contents
- What do you see in the forest?
- How did Mondrian handle the paint?
- Why is the white frame important?
- Is this the same work as RKD A592?
- Where does it fit in his development?
What do you see in the forest?
A stand of slender trees fills the canvas. Their dark trunks and branches form vertical and curving marks in front of a brighter area deeper in the wood. The ground below is not an even brown carpet: strokes of blue, violet, red, ochre and pale light break it into shifting patches. Looking through the trees, the eye finds a glow near the centre and then returns to the darker trunks at the edges.
 The Red Tree Piet Mondrian.jpg)
Mondrian does not describe each leaf and twig separately. The forest becomes a set of long marks, interrupted spaces and colour contrasts. The trunks establish a loose order, but their spacing is irregular and their contours move. That gives the picture both structure and a sense of life. A viewer can read the scene as a particular wood and also notice how marks and intervals almost become a subject in themselves.
The breadth of the canvas matters. At 158 cm wide, this is much larger than many of Mondrian's smaller landscape studies. Reproduced at a few hundred pixels, its intricate passages can collapse into a dense pattern. The museum's dimensions restore a sense of physical scale to the long strokes and bright openings.[1]
How did Mondrian handle the paint?
Kunstmuseum Den Haag gives an unusually detailed account of how this painting was made. It describes Mondrian laying down strongly thinned paint, drawing with brushes, using broad brushes and sometimes scraping with a palette knife. That combination produces the elongated patterns visible in the trees and ground. The museum calls the work a kind of drawing in paint, a useful way to understand why its lines feel more insistent than in a softly blended landscape.[1]
The museum also notes that the glowing, saturated colours strengthen those drawn patterns. They do not simply fill areas between outlines. Orange and yellow seem to burn through cooler violet and blue, while the dark trunks change their force according to the colours behind them. The picture's effect comes from the interaction of mark and colour, not from one technique added after the other.
An old comparison with Edvard Munch's work has been repeated in discussions of this canvas. The collecting museum cautions that Mondrian probably did not know Munch's work in 1908: it was not exhibited in Amsterdam and had little discussion in the Dutch press before 1911. The museum suggests that the resemblance may arise from a shared way of treating a picture as painted drawing. That is a more careful comparison than claiming direct influence without evidence.[1]
Watch: Piet Mondrian
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Watch on YouTubeWhy is the white frame important?
The museum says Mondrian submitted this painting for a January 1909 exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, organised with artists Cees Spoor and Jan Sluijters. In preparing the works, he considered how viewers would encounter them. He put canvases into broad white painted frames, which, the museum explains, pushed the coloured painting forward visually. The broad white frame around Woods near Oele survives.[1]
The frame is more than a neutral afterthought. Against white, the forest's dark trunks and saturated colour can appear more intense. It also establishes a clear boundary around a scene whose strokes otherwise seem to run and branch in many directions. This documented choice shows Mondrian thinking about how a finished work meets its surrounding space years before his mature geometric compositions. It does not mean the forest was already a hidden grid; it means presentation was part of the work's effect.
The museum's discussion of the frame is especially valuable because online crops often omit it. If a reproduction shows only the painted rectangle, one can still study the trunks and light, but a part of Mondrian's 1909 presentation decision disappears. The original's scale and frame are reasons to look at the collecting institution's record alongside a small image.[1]
Is this the same work as RKD A592?
No. The RKD Twente catalogue lists A592 as Woods near Oele, c. 1907–early 1908, in an Amsterdam art-dealer record. Immediately after it, RKD lists A593 as Woods, 1908, in Kunstmuseum Den Haag, object 0334284. The museum itself supplies Woods near Oele as a title for 0334284. Thus the same phrase is attached to two nearby catalogue records, but the museum inventory and pictured canvas identify the present page as A593.[1][2]
The distinction is important because a title can change between a scholarly catalogue and a museum website. A search result for “Woods near Oele” alone does not settle which canvas, medium, dimensions or collection a writer should describe. Here 0334284 is the fixed link between the image, museum facts and RKD entry. The separate A592 need not be given invented dimensions or a present owner to make this clear.
Where does it fit in his development?
Kunstmuseum Den Haag places this work on Mondrian's path from realistic landscape to more independent line and colour around 1908. The Twente catalogue places it among woods, fields and other eastern Dutch subjects. Its forest still clearly represents trees and light, but the stretched marks and saturated colours make the visual construction unusually conspicuous.[1][2]
This is not a straight line from “nature” to “abstraction” in which every earlier painting is valuable only because it predicts a later one. The forest is compelling on its own terms: an encounter with a wooded space, an experiment in brushwork, a controlled play of warm and cool colour, and a large painting prepared for public display. Those qualities explain why it remains a substantial work in the museum's Mondrian collection.
The 1908 Windmill in Sunlight provides another view of Mondrian's experiments in intense colour at about this time. Comparing the two can reveal different responses to natural light, but the forest's many narrow trunks create a far denser linear field than the mill's architectural mass.
Mondrian artworks directory
Frequently asked questions
Where is Woods near Oele ?
The painting shown here is in Kunstmuseum Den Haag, object 0334284, from the bequest of Salomon B. Slijper.[1]
How large is it?
The museum records 128 cm high by 158 cm wide and identifies the material as oil on canvas.[1]
Which RKD number belongs to this image?
The Hague object 0334284 is A593 in RKD. A592 is a separate catalogue record with a similar title.[2]
Is its white frame original to Mondrian's presentation?
The museum says Mondrian used broad white painted frames for the 1909 exhibition and that the frame around this work remains in place.[1]
Discussion
How do the dark trunks structure the picture?
Reader Insights
Where does warm colour break through cool shadow?
How does the broad white frame affect the painting?
How does the broad white frame affect the painting?
Join the Conversation
Share what you notice in this painting below.
References
- Kunstmuseum Den Haag, official Bosch (Woods); Woods near Oele object record, 0334284: medium, size, method, 1909 exhibition and white frame. View source.
- RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art History, Mondrian Twente catalogue A538–A593, distinguishing A592 from the Hague A593/0334284. View source.
- Lead image credit. Piet Mondrian, Bosch (Woods); Woods near Oele, 1908, oil on canvas, 128 × 158 cm, Kunstmuseum Den Haag, 0334284, RKD A593.
