I’m pleased to highlight a particularly fine watercolor by Lyonel Feininger (1871–1956), Mühle auf Usedom (Windmill on Usedom), 1933, which shows a lone windmill in an olive- and sepia-toned landscape. It was inspired by his earlier painting, Windmühle bei Usedom (Windmill near Usedom), 1927, which I had the privilege of placing in the Staatliches Museum Schwerin. In both works, the windmill commands the center left of the composition, which opens to a view of low houses in the background.

Feininger was especially fond of windmills, a subject to which he returned throughout his career. He made nine paintings featuring a variety of windmills, as well as numerous drawings and prints. In 1993, I curated an exhibition featuring a selection of these works, showing 20 windmill drawings that the artist produced between 1901 and 1921. My late friend Florens Deuchler, who was an esteemed art historian, wrote the foreword to the accompanying exhibition catalogue, in which he pointed out that windmills are rooted in art and literary history, appearing in paintings by masters like Rembrandt and van Gogh and taking on a personified role in Don Quixote. Feininger “enjoyed their grotesque silhouettes,” Deuchler wrote, and “is inspired to imbue his windmills with a mysterious existence, which begins to stir under his amused eyes: Feininger as a secret Windmill-Pygmalion.”

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Achim Moeller