7 Meindert Hobbema (1638-1709) Landscape with travellers and a watermill indistinctly signed (lower right) oil on panel, 23x30 cm
This unique panel, painted with crystalline clarity and understated refinement, stands as a testament to Meindert Hobbema’s consummate mastery in capturing both the grandeur of nature and the tranquil poetry of rural life. The great age of Dutch landscape painting extended roughly from 1640 to 1680. More monumental than Van Goyen’s modest tonal scenes -like the painting now up for auction (lot 8) - these so-called classic landscapes were typically structured around clearly defined focal points, such clusters of trees, farm buildings, or gentle hills, animated by dramatic contrasts of light and shadow and by expanses of billowing cloud. Among the leading exponents of this genre, Jacob van Ruisdael (1628-1682) and his pupil Meindert Hobbema stand pre-eminent as the finest landscapists of the Dutch seventeenth century. Hobbema’s idyllic views are carefully composed, displaying his meticulous handling of twisted foliage and his sensitive articulation of light across the undulating terrain. Unlike his master, who revelled in nature’s wild splendour, Hobbema preferred the quiet intimacy of rural scenes, of sun-dappled countryside, tree-lined paths, and humble buildings. While Hobbema softened Ruisdael’s dramatic conception of landscape, he retained a sense of inventive grandeur in his depictions of the Dutch countryside. The subtle chromatic restraint of cool blues, silvery greys, and mossy greens reflects the influence of Jacob van Ruisdael, Hobbema’s teacher, yet the mood is Hobbema’s own: less dramatic, more reflective, imbued with a gentle lyricism that evokes of the Dutch countryside as a place of enduring peace. In this composition, Hobbema achieves the serene equilibrium between natural grandeur and pastoral intimacy that marks his finest period of the 1660s and 1670s. The setting recalls the landscape scenes painted by artist’s circle in the eastern Netherlands, possibly inspired by the countryside around Gelderland or Overijssel, regions he is known to have visited. Beneath a vast and luminous sky, punctuated by drifting cumulus clouds and two birds gliding in the distance, unfolds a scene of rural life. The viewer’s gaze follows a sandy track curving gently through the foreground, catching a delicate play of sunlight before descending toward a shaded hollow. Along this path rides a solitary horseman, observed closely by a second, fainter silhouette who appears to pause, almost as if to hail him. The two are calmy embraced between a dense stand of trees to the right and, a building with a watermill to the left. Watermills feature in some thirty-five of Hobbema’s paintings, many derived from drawings made either by the artist himself or by contemporaries such as his teacher Ruisdael. Beyond the mill, in the centre, a church tower rises above the horizon’s line, as a quite sentinel observing the daily rhythms of the mundane life. The trees, rendered short, rhythmic brushwork, display a variety of greens and ochres. Their leaves catch the changing light, while their trunks and branches form a counterpoint of structure against the sky. The play of shadow and sunlight across the earth; those soft, dappled patches of ochre and umber are quintessentially Hobbema, balancing precision of observation with painterly delicacy.
Painted circa 1670-1680.
€30,000 - €40,000
Literature: -Dr C. Hofstede de Groot, ‘Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten Holländischen Maler’, Vol. IV, p. 409, no. 111, as: ’Schönes Werk’. Provenance: -Collection Robert Geelhand, Antwerpen, 1888. -Collection M. Edmond Huybrechts, Antwerp; His auction, Antwerp, 12-15 May 1902, lot 89 (with ill.). -Collection M. Leroy, Brussels, 1902. -Auction, ‘Collectie van wijlen mevrouw weduwe H.S. te Brussel’, Frederik Muller & Cie., Amsterdam, 19 June 1913, lot 129 (with ill.). -Acquired at the above by Kunsthandel J. Goudstikker, Amsterdam, 1913.
-Collection A.F. Philips 1913, Eindhoven, thence by descent to the present owner.
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