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Wijk by Duurstede lies at the point where the Rhine divides into the Lek and the so-called Crooked Rhine. At the far right, the unfinished, blunt spire of St John's Church in Wijk rises into the picture. Likewise identifiable in the background is the castle, the ruins of which are still there today. The mill, in contrast, has not survived, except for a few remnants of its foundation. In that it depicts certain features of the local environs and thus recognizes them as worthy of inclusion in art, this is a typical work of Dutch seventeenth-century painting - and one of the finest.
The way the windmill is isolated against sky and land is instructive. This calculated composition, only apparently objectively recapitulating the existing scene, is the result neither of pure artistic imagination nor of pure empirical observation. The confrontation of the windmill vanes with the dramatically towering clouds in the background engenders, on the one hand, a striking depth of vision, while on the other underscoring the mill's presence as a soaring monument. A windmill is not only a work of man subject to the forces of nature; it is also a place of vision.
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