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 Travelers | The Travelers | Hut among Trees | View Along the Amstel | allen vid middelharnis |
Related Artists:
Bernardo Lopez
1801-1874 Spanish Bernardo Lopez Gallery
Samuel Sidley
British 1829-1896
Dora Carrington
British Painter, 1893-1932 English painter and decorative artist. Daughter of a Liverpool merchant, she was brought up in Bedford. She trained at the Slade School of Fine Art in London where she met John Nash, who aroused her interest in wood-engraving, and Mark Gertler, whose powerful figure paintings influenced her own approach to portraiture. She rejected Gertler as a lover and set up home with the homosexual essayist and biographer Lytton Strachey (1880-1932), first at Tidmarsh Mill, near Pangbourne, Berks, then at Ham Spray, between Newbury and Hungerford, Berks. In 1921 she married Ralph Partridge, living with him and Strachey in a m?nage ? trois, surrounded mainly by literary friends and receiving little encouragement to exhibit. She turned instead to decorative work, emulating Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant but in a style more native in inspiration and more naive. She designed tiles and inn signs, experimented with painting on glass and tinfoil, decorated furniture and designed the library at Ham Spray.