Red Rooftop

"Rooftop"
2.5 x 3.5 inches
watercolour
For sale
I work in the city of Leiden in one of the university buildings. The building I work in is a standard grey '70s brick building, but I look out at a building that's popularly known as the "Arsenal", from the days when arsenal for the military was stored there. These days the department of Sinology and Asian Studies is housed in this brown brick building.

Older brick buildings in Holland usually have a tiled roof. If you look out over the city of Leiden, which has an old city centre, from a high point, you see a lovely quilt of red-tiled roofs and green trees.

I love looking out at this rooftop. It changes with the weather, and it makes a lovely frame for the sky. On brilliant sunny days it's a stark and scorching red. Under rolling clouds its red becomes a more muted ochre colour. Seagulls use it as a place to perch.

It reminds me of paintings by 19th-century Dutch paintings by painters like Weissenbruch.