This rural landscape scene has long been esteemed as one of Hobbema’s finest paintings. In 1890 Michel described it as one of the artist’s most remarkable works and Bode, in the translation of his 1910 catalog, termed it “a masterpiece with which few can compare.” Its distinguished provenance dates back to the end of the eighteenth century. From its earliest appearance in the literature, it formed a pendant to Hobbema’s famous painting of a watermill, now in the Louvre [fig. 1]
[fig. 1] Meindert Hobbema, The Mill, c. 1668, oil on canvas, Musée du Louvre, Paris. Photo: Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource, NY. Photographer: Jean-Gilles Berizzi. The two works were separated at the Nieuwenhuys sale in 1833.
As in other instances where pendant relationships in Hobbema’s work seems to exist, no irrefutable proof exists that these works were originally intended to be hung together, although compositional and stylistic similarities reinforce the historical evidence. In both paintings the focus of the composition is the sunlit farm buildings in the middle ground. The shaded large trees that occupy the foreground have long, flowing trunks surmounted by an open structure of branches and foliage. Their dark brownish green tones act as a foil to the yellow glow of the sunlit distance. Above all, the vertical formats of the paintings, rare among Hobbema’s works, argue for the hypothesis that they were pendants. Other artists, including Salomon van Ruysdael (Dutch, c. 1602 - 1670), used this format for companion pieces.
The vertical format was one of the factors considered by Jakob Rosenberg when he assigned this work a date of around or after 1670. Rosenberg also argued for a late date on the basis of the transparency of the upper parts of the trees, the exaggeration of specific Hobbema effects, and the reduction of the corporeality of the landscape. However, Rosenberg pushed the date too late, as became evident when remnants of the signature and date of 1668 were revealed during the conservation treatment of the painting in 1992. Although the trees in this work are somewhat elongated and the foliage is relatively transparent, stylistically they do not differ substantially from those in Hobbema’s A View on a High Road, signed and dated 1665. The most significant difference between these paintings is the increased complexity of the compositional structure of A Farm in the Sunlight. In this case, the viewer is denied easy access into the background along a meandering road: the foreground path leads out of the composition to the left, and one is forced to retrace and find other routes to the distant vistas.
The watermill in the Louvre painting has been identified as that belonging to the manor house of Singraven near Denekamp in the province of Overijssel. If the two paintings are indeed pendants, one might expect that the Washington composition also represents a precise location. No specific site, however, has yet been suggested for the scene, and it seems unlikely that the buildings here represented, none of which have distinctive characteristics, can ever be identified. Nevertheless, the type of vernacular architecture represented, with the high-peaked roof of the half-timbered barn, is representative of that found in the eastern provinces of the Netherlands, including Overijssel.
Finally, as is typical of Hobbema’s paintings, the figural group in the foreground is probably by another hand. The names of Abraham Storck (1644–after 1708) and Adriaen van de Velde (Dutch, 1636 - 1672) have been proposed, but neither suggestion is acceptable.
Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.
April 24, 2014
