The Water Mill

1663 · Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels

landscape

No one landscape painter of the Northern Low Countries has repeated the motif of water mills as often as Meindert Hobbema. More than 30 paintings treating this theme are known and are considered to represent some of his finest work. This theme, which was finally to become a sort of trade mark of Hobbema's work, was not, however, his own discovery, but that of his teacher Jacob van Ruisdael.

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About the Artist

Meyndert Hobbema

1638 – 1709

Dutch landscape painter. He worked in his native Amsterdam, where he was the friend and only documented pupil of Jacob van Ruisdael. Some of his pictures are very like Ruisdael's, but his range was more limited and he lacked the latter's power to capture the majesty of nature. He painted a narrow range of favourite subjects — particularly water-mills and trees around a pool — over and over again. In 1668 he became a wine gauger with the Amsterdam customs and excise, and thereafter seems to have painted only in his spare time. However, his most famous work, The Avenue at Middelharnis (National Gallery, London), dates from 1689. Hobbema has long been a popular artist in England (his influence is clear in Gainsborough 's early landscapes) and he is outstandingly well represented in English collections.

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