1638-1709 Dutch Meindert Hobbema Galleries In the exercise of his craft Hobbema was patient beyond all conception. It is doubtful whether any one ever so completely mastered as he did the still life of woods and hedges, or mills and pools. Nor can we believe that he obtained this mastery otherwise than by constantly dwelling in the same neighbourhood, say in Guelders or on the Dutch Westphalian border, where day after day he might study the branching and foliage of trees and underwood embowering cottages and mills, under every variety of light, in every shade of transparency, in all changes produced by the seasons. Though his landscapes are severely and moderately toned, generally in an olive key, and often attuned to a puritanical grey or russet, they surprise us, not only by the variety of their leafage, but by the finish of their detail as well as the boldness of their touch. With astonishing subtlety light is shown penetrating cloud, and illuminating, sometimes transiently, sometimes steadily, different portions of the ground, shining through leaves upon other leaves, and multiplying in an endless way the transparency of the picture. If the chance be given him he mirrors all these things in the still pool near a cottage, the reaches of a sluggish river, or the swirl of the stream that feeds a busy mill. The same spot will furnish him with several pictures. One mill gives him repeated opportunities of charming our eye; and this wonderful artist, who is only second to Ruisdael because he had not Ruisdael's versatility and did not extend his study equally to downs and rocky eminences, or torrents and estuaries - this is the man who lived penuriously, died poor, and left no trace in the artistic annals of his country. It has been said that Hobbema did not paint his own figures, but transferred that duty to Adriaen van de Velde, Lingelbach, Barendt Gael, and Abraham Storck. As to this much is conjecture.  Related Paintings of Meindert Hobbema :. | The Water Mill | Road on a Dyke | Avenue at Middleharnis | The Alley at Middelharnis | Cottages beside a Track through a Wood |
Related Artists:
Lorens Gottman
(1708 -1779 ) - Painter
Vilhelm Kyhm
"Jysk skovegn" ("Jutland woodlands"), painted near Silkeborg in 1845 by Vilhelm Kyhn in the very beginning of his career, exhibited at Charlottenborg in 1846. Oil on canvas, 77,5x104 cm.
Francis Hayman
English Painter, 1708-1776,English painter and illustrator. He was in London at the age of 10, and from 1718 until c. 1725 he was apprenticed to Robert Brown (d 1753), a decorative painter. From 1732 Hayman was employed as a scene painter at Goodman's Fields Theatre, where he painted allegorical works such as The King Attended by Peace, with Liberty and Justice Trampling on Tyranny and Oppression on the pit ceiling (destr.). He moved to Drury Lane Theatre in 1736, shortly before the Licensing Act closed Goodman's Fields. At Drury Lane he painted scenery for Thomas Arne's masque The Fall of Phaeton (1736) and was praised for his naturalistic landscapes. From the late 1730s he began accepting commissions for portraits and conversation pieces. His success in the field of portraiture rested on the dearth of good portrait painters in England at the time and his exploitation of a growing middle-class clientele. Hayman painted portraits of doctors, literary men and actors.