Wooded Landscape with a Watermill

landscape

In the early seventeenth century the dominant trend in Dutch landscape painting was for harmonious and flat coastal scenes, exemplified by in the work of Jan van Goyen and Salomon van Ruysdael. In the second half of the century, however, there was a tendency to dramatize nature, as in the night scenes by Aert van der Neer and Jacob van Ruisdael's romantically dramatic paintings of ruins, cascading waterfalls and stormy weather. Meyndert Hobbema was a pupil of Jacob van Ruisdael and followed the dramatic landscape tradition.

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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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