Extract from a letter by Mondrian to H.P.Bremmer, critic and teacher. Circa 1913-14.

'Nature (or what I see) inspires me, gives me, as it does virtually every painter, the emotion from which the urge derives to create something. But I want to approach truth as closely as possible, and thus I abstract everything until I come to the essence (always the external essence!) of things.'

This photograph of the high-minded, austere young artist was taken 2 years before Mondrian began work on 'Sun, Church in Zeeland.'

Mondrian in his New York Studio, 1942-43
Photo Fritz Glarner.