Wooded Landscape with Figures

c. 1658

Meindert Hobbema

Painter, Dutch, 1638 - 1709

Two men and a dog walk or stand on a rutted dirt road that stretches into the distance in front of us, between a grove of trees to our left and a shallow, narrow canal or ditch to our right in this horizontal landscape painting. The horizon comes about a quarter of the way up the composition, and puffy white clouds float across a pale blue sky above. Outlined against the sky, the leaves of some of the trees to our left are olive or moss green, and others are golden yellow. Tiny in scale and a distance from us, the men wear dark, brimmed hats and dark pants and shoes or boots. One wears a crimson-red shirt or jacket and the other has something white, presumably a sack, flung across one shoulder over a dark jacket. The men walk or pause near a short row of three trees between the path and the canal to our right. Farther back and almost lost in shadow to our left, a third person is painted as a dark silhouette walking near the grove of trees. The water in the canal shimmers between marine blue and pale rust brown. The area beyond the canal is flat fields. Painted as a faint gray silhouette along the far distant horizon, the spires of a church and other buildings indicate a town in the deep distance to our right. A few dots of dark paint suggest birds flying high over the fields to our right. The artist signed the painting in the lower right corner, making the first two letters into an intertwined monogram: “MHobbema.”

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In this quiet landscape scene, two men chat as they amble along a rutted road atop a dike that separates verdant woods from low-lying fields and their drainage ditches. The substantial buildings, churches, and towers that rise along the horizon may represent Amsterdam, Meindert Hobbema’s native city, but the town is so distant that it barely intrudes on the painting’s overriding sense of nature.

The light and delicate quality of this work is characteristic of paintings executed by Hobbema in the late 1650s, before he began his apprenticeship with Jacob van Ruisdael, who moved to Amsterdam from Haarlem in 1657. The subtle mood of this scene is strikingly different from the more robust landscapes Hobbema executed from the early 1660s onward as a result of Van Ruisdael’s influence. The distinctive signature MHobbema (with the M and H joined) also points to an early work.

Hobbema was more interested in capturing the gentle rhythms of nature than the human presence, and his reticence to include many figures probably derived from his relative weakness as a figure painter. Hobbema did depict three people, although small in scale. A tiny figure, barely discernable along the tree line near the curve of the dike, amplifies the suggestion of depth and distance. The two men in the middle of the road, one wearing a red jacket and one carrying a white sack on his shoulder, actually serve another important function: not only do they provide an engaging pictorial accent that enhances the scene’s pleasant charm, but they also suggest those quiet moments of communication that are so important in human existence.

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Artwork overview

More About this Artwork

This horizontal painting shows a group of eight light-skinned musicians and onlookers gathered closely around a rectangular, carpet-covered table. The front edge of the table runs parallel to the bottom edge of the painting, and seems close to us. Shown from about the waist up, the men and women’s vivid lapis-blue, coral-red, buttercup-yellow, lilac-purple, and moss-green garments fall in crisp folds. Bright reflections on the fabric suggest a satin-like material. Two women wear feathers in their hair and one man’s hat is plumed. One man, wearing crimson red and black, sits with his back to us to our left on the near side of the table. He holds the neck of a bass viol, about the size of a cello, with his left hand, and points to pages of an open music book with the bow in his right hand. The other people cluster on the far side of the table. A man to the left plays a violin; a woman at the center plays a guitar-sized bandora, and a woman to our right plays a lute. The musicians, along with a man who leans over the table from between the two women, look down at the music books. A young man behind the woman at the center holds up a glass of pale liquid with his right hand as he touches his left forefinger to his smiling lips. A man and woman stand close together in the background to our right, in the top right corner of the canvas.

Scholarly Series:  Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century

Scholarly Article:  Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century: Wooded Landscape with Figures, c. 1658

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Sir George Donaldson [1845-1925], London; purchased 1906 by William A. Clark [1839-1925], New York; bequest April 1926 to the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; acquired 2015 by the National Gallery of Art.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1908

  • Loan to display with permanent collection, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 1908-1909.

Bibliography

1907

  • Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century. 8 vols. Translated by Edward G. Hawke. London, 1907-1927: 4(1912):401, no. 139.

  • Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis. Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts. 10 vols. Esslingen and Paris, 1907-1928: 4(1911):420, no. 139.

1925

  • Carroll, Dana H. Catalogue of Objects of Fine Art and Other Properties at the Home of William Andrews Clark, 962 Fifth Avenue. Part I. Unpublished manuscript, n.d. (1925): 131, no. 69.

1928

  • Corcoran Gallery of Art. Illustrated Handbook of the W.A. Clark Collection. Washington, 1928: 45.

1932

  • Corcoran Gallery of Art. Illustrated Handbook of the W.A. Clark Collection. Washington, 1932: 47.

1953

  • Quandt, Russell J. "Reclamation of Two Paintings." The Corcoran Gallery of Art Bulletin 6, no. 3 (October 1953): 2-15, 2 fig. 1, 4 fig. 2 (detail), 6 fig. 3 (detail), 7 fig. 4 (detail), 8 fig. 5.

1955

  • Breckenridge, James D. A handbook of Dutch and Flemish paintings in the William Andrews Clark collection. Washington, 1955: 27, repro.

1959

  • Stechow, Wolfgang. "The Early Years of Hobbema." Art Quarterly 22 (Spring 1959): 5 fig. 3, 9.

1992

  • Wright, Christopher. The World's Master Paintings: From the Early Renaissance to the Present Day. London, 1992: 333.

Inscriptions

lower right, MH in monogram: MHobbema

Wikidata ID

Q46624967

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