A Watercourse at Abcoude

This is a typical Dutch landscape with water, a few trees, a man fishing, some cows and a mill in the distance. The broad watercourse, directs the viewer's gaze towards the distance. In this way the artist Paul Gabriel, created a strong effect of perspectivePerspectiveThe science of perspective consists of a collection of rules that enables the artist to represent a subject in three dimensions on a flat surface. Objects appear smaller the further they are from the viewer. To create an illusion of space the painter must therefore also present things in the distance as being smaller. To do this he can make use of lines drawn across the parallel lines of a surface and continued further till they converge in a single point on the horizon known as the vanishing point. The word 'perspective' comes from the Latin 'perspicere' meaning to look through. A painting with a correct perspective is like a window on the outside world, a hole in the wall through which the viewer can gaze.. The low horizon is a typical feature in Dutch landscape painting, allowing the subtly coloured cloudy sky to form an important part of the composition. In 1878, when Gabriel painted this landscape, he was living in Brussels. He paid frequent visits to Holland to depict the polder landscape in sketches and paintings. This watery landscape is close to the village of Abcoude, a stone's throw from Amsterdam.