_Meindert Hobbema_ (Dutch: 1638-1709).
Hobbema, who disputes with Ruysdael the place of best Dutch
landscape painter, was a friend of the latter, and perhaps his
pupil: certainly works of the two are sometimes remarkably
alike. Thus it has been pointed out that Hobbema's No. 996
shows the influence of Ruysdael, whilst Ruysdael's No. 986
recalls Hobbema's. Often, too, they painted the same country;
compare _e.g._ No. 986 with Hobbema's No. 832. Like Ruysdael,
too, Hobbema was a painter without honour in his own country,
and nine-tenths of his known works are in England, where he was
first appreciated, and where he was the means of influencing
many of our landscape painters, notably Nasmyth. His pictures
were often ascribed to other painters, now considered greatly
his inferiors, in order to obtain better prices. It has been
remarked as a curious fact that until the middle of the
eighteenth century no engraver thought it worth while to
reproduce any of Hobbema's pictures; and Sir Joshua Reynolds
in his _Tour in Holland_ (1781) makes no reference to Hobbema,
though he must have seen some of his pictures. Even a hundred
years ago they were not much sought after; now they are more
valued than those of any landscape painter and fetch very
large prices at auctions. Recently one of them sold for as
much as £8820. This appreciation is due in part to the fact
that Hobbemas are very rare; the known works by him number
hardly more than a hundred. Of Hobbema's life very little
is recorded. His name (like that of Alma Tadema) betokens
Frisian origin. His birthplace is unknown, but he appears to
have been born at Amsterdam, and to have been the scholar of
Jacob Ruysdael in landscape painting. Ruysdael was the witness
at his marriage. This was in 1668. In the same year he was
appointed one of the sworn gaugers for the excise of the town.
"Thus, a century before Burns, fortune played upon one of the
greatest of landscape painters the same trick that she played
in his case upon the most spontaneous of poets." Hobbema was
not the only painter of his time who had to eke out a bare
subsistence by employment more lucrative than the production
of masterpieces. Salomon van Ruysdael was also a frame-maker;
Van Goyen speculated in houses, picture-dealing, and tulips;
and Jan Steen was an innkeeper. The coincidence of Hobbema's
marriage and his appointment as gauger of wines and oil was not
by chance. The archives throw a curious light upon the public
morals of Amsterdam at the time of its greatest prosperity. By
a deed executed in the month of his marriage, Hobbema admits
that he owes his appointment to the influence of a companion
of his wife, like her a servant in the employment of the
burgomaster, and in consideration of this he agrees to pay her,
so long as he holds the place, an annual sum of 250 florins.
Posterity owes this servant of the burgomaster a grudge, for
after taking up the appointment, Hobbema scarcely painted
any more. The post cannot, however, have been lucrative, for
he died in evil circumstances--in a house directly opposite
to that in which Rembrandt had died forty years before. The
painter of works, any one of which is now worth a small fortune
to its possessor, was buried in a pauper's grave.
In spite of the resemblance to Ruysdael above noted, Hobbema's
best and most characteristic works are quite distinct.
Ruysdael is the painter of the solitude of nature, of rocks
and waterfalls; Hobbema of the Dutch "fields with dwellings
sprinkled o'er." The pervading tone of Ruysdael is dark
and sombre; that of Hobbema is drowsy and still. A second
characteristic of Hobbema is his fondness for oak foliage, and
a certain "nigglingness" in his execution of it. See _e.g._
832, 833. "They (Hobbema and Both) can paint oak leafage
faithfully, but do not know where to stop, and by doing too
much, lose the truth of all, lose the very truth of detail
at which they aim, for all their minute work only gives two
leaves to nature's twenty. They are evidently incapable of
even thinking of a tree, much more of drawing it, except leaf
by leaf; they have no notion nor sense of simplicity, mass,
or obscurity, and when they come to distance, where it is
totally impossible that leaves should be separately seen,
being incapable of conceiving or rendering the grand and quiet
forms of truth, they are reduced to paint their bushes with
dots and touches expressive of leaves three feet broad each."
"No word," Ruskin elsewhere adds, "has been more harmfully
misused than that ugly one of 'niggling.' I should be glad if
it were entirely banished from service and record. The only
essential question about drawing is whether it be right or
wrong; that it be small or large, swift or slow, is a matter of
convenience only. But so far as the word may be legitimately
used at all, it belongs especially to such execution as this
of Hobbema's--execution which substitutes, on whatever scale,
a mechanical trick or habit of hand for true drawing of known
or intended forms." A second objection to Hobbema's method may
be mentioned besides its "trickiness." His "niggling" touch
is extended from the foreground to objects farther off, and
thus "a middle distance of Hobbema involves a contradiction
in terms; it states a distance by perspective, which it
contradicts by distinctness of detail" (_Modern Painters_, vol.
i. pt. ii. sec. ii. ch. v. § 17, sec. vi. ch. i. § 22; vol. v.
pt. vi. ch. v. § 6). In spite, however, of such defects, the
works of Hobbema have an enduring charm for their incisiveness
of touch, and warmth of light. He had not Ruysdael's variety
nor his depth of poetic feeling. The forest glade and the
watermill are almost all he paints. But these he paints so
firmly and decisively that they live for ever, and upon them he
casts a warm and golden tone which never fails to please.