.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
This is an exquisite example of Hobbema's small-scale, mature landscape painting, akin in essence to the Wooded Landscape sold recently in these Rooms, 7 July 2004, lot 43. It has been suggested that many of these smaller pictures were in effect detailed studies for subsequent, larger works (as, for example, the Stream by a Wood in the National Gallery, London, is for the painting in the Museum Boijmans-Van Beuningen, Rotterdam); but no such work is known for the present picture and the delicacy of touch and the intimate feeling evoked by the landscape seem particularly apt for a painting of this size.
Hobbema worked as a young man in the studio of Jacob van Ruisdael but by the early 1660s had evolved his own mode of expression, having emerged from his master's shadow. Hobbema's interpretation of his native landscape presents a gentler side of nature to Ruisdael's occasionally sombre and brooding works. His palette, composed of characteristic greens, yellows, greys and browns, is softer and lighter, suggestive of details that caused John Smith to write of the artist: 'Whatever emanated from his pencil bears the true impress of nature, under her most engaging aspect; whether the rural scene presents the unripe freshness of the vernal season, or the varied foliage of mellow autumn' (J. Smith, A Catalogue Raisonné, etc., VI, London, 1835, p. 111).
Waagen (loc.cit.) observed that Charles Bredel's collection of Dutch pictures was 'of no great extent but consisted almost throughout of such first-rate specimens as to evince the highest taste and discrimination in selection'. Bredel died in 1851 bequeathing Backhuizen's The Eendracht and the Dutch Fleet before the Wind to the National Gallery, London. The bulk of his collection was passed down to his daughter who sold the pictures in these Rooms, 1 May 1875 (although the present work was not included). Amongst those that were in the sale was a masterpiece by Frans van Mieris - his Inn Scene, of 1658, now in the Mauritshuis, The Hague; Jacob van Ruisdael's Landscape with a ruined Gateway, Albert Cuyp's early River Scene with distant Windmills (both The National Gallery, London), and another Hobbema that was deemed by Waagen to be 'as fine a specimen of the master in this line' (now untraced).
For a discussion of the picture's next owner, Samuel Jones Loyd, 1st Lord Overstone (1796-1883), see note to lot 43.
Hobbema worked as a young man in the studio of Jacob van Ruisdael but by the early 1660s had evolved his own mode of expression, having emerged from his master's shadow. Hobbema's interpretation of his native landscape presents a gentler side of nature to Ruisdael's occasionally sombre and brooding works. His palette, composed of characteristic greens, yellows, greys and browns, is softer and lighter, suggestive of details that caused John Smith to write of the artist: 'Whatever emanated from his pencil bears the true impress of nature, under her most engaging aspect; whether the rural scene presents the unripe freshness of the vernal season, or the varied foliage of mellow autumn' (J. Smith, A Catalogue Raisonné, etc., VI, London, 1835, p. 111).
Waagen (loc.cit.) observed that Charles Bredel's collection of Dutch pictures was 'of no great extent but consisted almost throughout of such first-rate specimens as to evince the highest taste and discrimination in selection'. Bredel died in 1851 bequeathing Backhuizen's The Eendracht and the Dutch Fleet before the Wind to the National Gallery, London. The bulk of his collection was passed down to his daughter who sold the pictures in these Rooms, 1 May 1875 (although the present work was not included). Amongst those that were in the sale was a masterpiece by Frans van Mieris - his Inn Scene, of 1658, now in the Mauritshuis, The Hague; Jacob van Ruisdael's Landscape with a ruined Gateway, Albert Cuyp's early River Scene with distant Windmills (both The National Gallery, London), and another Hobbema that was deemed by Waagen to be 'as fine a specimen of the master in this line' (now untraced).
For a discussion of the picture's next owner, Samuel Jones Loyd, 1st Lord Overstone (1796-1883), see note to lot 43.