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Lot Essay
This is one of Hobbema's largest and most successful landscapes. In style and composition the painting is typical of the artist's finest work, comparable with pictures such as the View on a High Road, the Hut among trees (both National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), the Village with a water-mill among trees (Frick Collection, New York) or the Entrance to a village (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). The scene presented is a wooded hamlet, consisting of six brick farmhouses, some with contiguous, clapboard sheds, and with thatched roofs; two sandy tracks run through the hamlet, past a clump of oak trees, set in the centre above a pool.
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; the present work, although still showing Ruisdael's influence in elements such as the blasted tree in the foreground, is a work of that maturity, thought to date from the mid- to late-1660s. The scene, with its dramatic contrasts of dappled sunlight, may be said to be typical of Hobbema's artistic idiom. While he was a master at rendering the detail of a landscape - foliage, undergrowth, the bark of a tree, the surface of brick - it is thought that he composed his idyllic views in the studio by re-arranging and juxtaposing familiar motifs. However, if his landscapes may often have been imaginary, this type of wooded scene is said to be characteristic of the countryside of the eastern provinces - Drenthe and Gelderland - of the United Republic.
Hobbema's interpretation of his native landscape presents a gentler side of nature to Van Ruisdael's occasionally sombre and brooding works; his palette, composed of characteristic greens, yellows, greys and browns, is softer and lighter. He conjures an image of sunlight and greenery that suggests an airy summer afternoon, the billowing cumulus clouds hinting at a breeze reflected in the slight bent of the trees and their leaves. These are the subtle details described by Smith when he wrote of Hobbema: '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. The several periods of the day are also given with admirable correctness, and no incident is neglected or overlooked that may contribute to the beauty of the piece' (op. cit., p. 111).
The picture is composed around two separate vanishing points, to which the eye is led on one side by the pathway and on the other by a fallen tree. Those two lines converge from either lower corner and cross diagonally at the knoll in the middle distance. This device, which allows the eye to travel back and forth across the painting, is frequently repeated in Hobbema's work and accounts for the fresh impact of his compositions. In the case of the present picture it also serves to break up the vertical accent of the central group of trees. Similarly characteristic of his technique is the shaded foreground, contrasting with the bright patch of ground in the centre background, a juxtaposition that greatly accentuates the sense of distance within the picture - an impression heightened by the row of cottages receding into the far distance.
The staffage is traditionally attributed to Abraham Storck, an ascription which pace Hofstede de Groot is probably correct. Hobbema turned on occasions to collaborators for the staffage, most notably to Johannes Lingelbach and Adriaen van de Velde, both of whom died in the early 1670s. Storck was some six years younger than Hobbema, and also active in Amsterdam; a more extensive work of collaboration may have been the View of Overtoom with the Teahouse 'De Plaats Royaal', recorded as with Katz in 1941 (photo in the R.K.D.). A gentleman wearing costume similar to that of the horseman appears in a Port Scene of 1673 by Storck at Felbrigg House, Norfolk (National Trust).
Extraordinary though it may appear with hindsight, given his stature as one of the best-loved of all Dutch landscapists, Hobbema's achievements as a painter seem not to have attracted the plaudits in his lifetime that have subsequently been awarded to him. It was traditionally believed that this was due to his having greatly decreased his output by the end of the 1660s, having been appointed in 1668 to the post of wine-gauger to the Amsterdam octroi - a minor salaried position that he held until his death, and which involved the supervision of the weighing and measuring of imported wines. His powers, however, remained undiminished as is evident from the late date - 1689 - of execution of his most famous landscape, the Avenue at Middelharnis in the National Gallery, London.
The revival of Hobbema's reputation began in England in the mid-eighteenth century. The great landscapists of British art admired his pictures; Gainsborough held his work in great affection - he probably became familiar with him early in his career in the 1740s, when he worked on restoring Dutch landscapes - and was influenced by him, as was the succeeding generation of British landscapists including most notably Constable and Turner. Not surprisingly it was in England, therefore, that the collecting of Hobbema's work also grew apace during these years, culminating when in 1850 at The Hague, Richard Seymour-Conway, 4th Marquess of Hertford, paid what was then a record price for a landscape when he bought The Water Mill (London, Wallace Collection) for 27,000 florins.
The present picture had already been in England for some time before that point, in the collection of the Earls, and subsequently Marquesses of Bute. For that, it was presumably acquired by John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute (1713-1792), the great statesman and patron of arts. Bute's collection was remarkable for the range and calibre of its Dutch pictures, which he began to buy in 1749 and which included works by almost every major seventeenth-century Dutch master except Rembrandt. Waagen, op. cit., p. 474, wrote of the Dutch paintings that: 'Of all the collections formed in England before the first French Revolution, it is the most important in works of this class; so that for productions of many of the first masters it may vie even with the finest collections formed since the Revolution....nay, it contains very fine works of several good masters of whom there are no specimens at all in those collections.' Among those were an exceptional group of works by Aelbert Cuyp, including the famous River Landscape with a horseman and peasants (National Gallery, London), as well as works such as Pieter de Hooch's Soldier paying a hostess (Private Collection, exhibited Pieter de Hooch, Wadsworth Atheneum and Dulwich Picture Gallery, 1998-9, no. 13). The collection was housed at his residence at Luton Park, Bedfordshire, which he had built by Adam between 1766 and 1774.
A reduced copy, perhaps made at the British Institution, was in the Boyle collection.
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; the present work, although still showing Ruisdael's influence in elements such as the blasted tree in the foreground, is a work of that maturity, thought to date from the mid- to late-1660s. The scene, with its dramatic contrasts of dappled sunlight, may be said to be typical of Hobbema's artistic idiom. While he was a master at rendering the detail of a landscape - foliage, undergrowth, the bark of a tree, the surface of brick - it is thought that he composed his idyllic views in the studio by re-arranging and juxtaposing familiar motifs. However, if his landscapes may often have been imaginary, this type of wooded scene is said to be characteristic of the countryside of the eastern provinces - Drenthe and Gelderland - of the United Republic.
Hobbema's interpretation of his native landscape presents a gentler side of nature to Van Ruisdael's occasionally sombre and brooding works; his palette, composed of characteristic greens, yellows, greys and browns, is softer and lighter. He conjures an image of sunlight and greenery that suggests an airy summer afternoon, the billowing cumulus clouds hinting at a breeze reflected in the slight bent of the trees and their leaves. These are the subtle details described by Smith when he wrote of Hobbema: '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. The several periods of the day are also given with admirable correctness, and no incident is neglected or overlooked that may contribute to the beauty of the piece' (op. cit., p. 111).
The picture is composed around two separate vanishing points, to which the eye is led on one side by the pathway and on the other by a fallen tree. Those two lines converge from either lower corner and cross diagonally at the knoll in the middle distance. This device, which allows the eye to travel back and forth across the painting, is frequently repeated in Hobbema's work and accounts for the fresh impact of his compositions. In the case of the present picture it also serves to break up the vertical accent of the central group of trees. Similarly characteristic of his technique is the shaded foreground, contrasting with the bright patch of ground in the centre background, a juxtaposition that greatly accentuates the sense of distance within the picture - an impression heightened by the row of cottages receding into the far distance.
The staffage is traditionally attributed to Abraham Storck, an ascription which pace Hofstede de Groot is probably correct. Hobbema turned on occasions to collaborators for the staffage, most notably to Johannes Lingelbach and Adriaen van de Velde, both of whom died in the early 1670s. Storck was some six years younger than Hobbema, and also active in Amsterdam; a more extensive work of collaboration may have been the View of Overtoom with the Teahouse 'De Plaats Royaal', recorded as with Katz in 1941 (photo in the R.K.D.). A gentleman wearing costume similar to that of the horseman appears in a Port Scene of 1673 by Storck at Felbrigg House, Norfolk (National Trust).
Extraordinary though it may appear with hindsight, given his stature as one of the best-loved of all Dutch landscapists, Hobbema's achievements as a painter seem not to have attracted the plaudits in his lifetime that have subsequently been awarded to him. It was traditionally believed that this was due to his having greatly decreased his output by the end of the 1660s, having been appointed in 1668 to the post of wine-gauger to the Amsterdam octroi - a minor salaried position that he held until his death, and which involved the supervision of the weighing and measuring of imported wines. His powers, however, remained undiminished as is evident from the late date - 1689 - of execution of his most famous landscape, the Avenue at Middelharnis in the National Gallery, London.
The revival of Hobbema's reputation began in England in the mid-eighteenth century. The great landscapists of British art admired his pictures; Gainsborough held his work in great affection - he probably became familiar with him early in his career in the 1740s, when he worked on restoring Dutch landscapes - and was influenced by him, as was the succeeding generation of British landscapists including most notably Constable and Turner. Not surprisingly it was in England, therefore, that the collecting of Hobbema's work also grew apace during these years, culminating when in 1850 at The Hague, Richard Seymour-Conway, 4th Marquess of Hertford, paid what was then a record price for a landscape when he bought The Water Mill (London, Wallace Collection) for 27,000 florins.
The present picture had already been in England for some time before that point, in the collection of the Earls, and subsequently Marquesses of Bute. For that, it was presumably acquired by John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute (1713-1792), the great statesman and patron of arts. Bute's collection was remarkable for the range and calibre of its Dutch pictures, which he began to buy in 1749 and which included works by almost every major seventeenth-century Dutch master except Rembrandt. Waagen, op. cit., p. 474, wrote of the Dutch paintings that: 'Of all the collections formed in England before the first French Revolution, it is the most important in works of this class; so that for productions of many of the first masters it may vie even with the finest collections formed since the Revolution....nay, it contains very fine works of several good masters of whom there are no specimens at all in those collections.' Among those were an exceptional group of works by Aelbert Cuyp, including the famous River Landscape with a horseman and peasants (National Gallery, London), as well as works such as Pieter de Hooch's Soldier paying a hostess (Private Collection, exhibited Pieter de Hooch, Wadsworth Atheneum and Dulwich Picture Gallery, 1998-9, no. 13). The collection was housed at his residence at Luton Park, Bedfordshire, which he had built by Adam between 1766 and 1774.
A reduced copy, perhaps made at the British Institution, was in the Boyle collection.