_Hobbema_ (Dutch: 1638-1709). _See 685._
Perhaps the best rendering of a Dutch village in the Gallery--beautiful
alike in its general effect and in the faithful way in which every
characteristic of the country is brought out. Note the long avenue,
a High Street, as it were, of lopped trees, to lead the traveller to
the village; the bright red roofs, suggestive already in the distance
of the cheerful cleanliness he will find; the broad ditch on either
side of the road--the land reclaimed from the water, and the water
now embanked to fertilise the land; the neat plantations, allotments
it may be, each as trim and well kept as a lawn; and lastly, the
nursery-garden on the left, in which the gardener, smoking, like
the true Hollander, as he works, is pruning some grafted trees.
Middelharnis is one of several places that dispute the honour of being
Hobbema's birthplace.
This picture--which is signed, and dated 16-9 (third figure
illegible)--is generally recognised as the painter's masterpiece. The
subject is unusual, showing a more open landscape and a wider expanse
of sky than Hobbema ordinarily represented. The power and freshness
with which he has treated the theme are remarkable. "Such daylight,"
says Waagen, "I have never seen in any picture." It is to be noted
further that the artist makes no effort to attain the picturesque,
and that the picture offends in some respects against the laws of
composition. Thus "M. Michel complains of the road coming straight,
at once cutting the picture awkwardly in two, of the slender trees
with which it is symmetrically bordered, and which have on their tops
only small plumes of foliage, of the parallel ditches which hold in
the road on either side, and of the cross-road which cuts the picture
horizontally, and lastly, the rose-trees and shrubs planted regularly
in straight lines. All this, he says, does not make a very picturesque
picture. For our own part, it is the fearless and truthful manner in
which Hobbema has treated what must at first sight have appeared an
unpromising subject, that is one of its greatest charms" (Cundall:
_The Landscape Painters of Holland_, p. 53). Like Hobbema's pictures
generally, this masterpiece was held in little honour in its own
country. It was sold at Dort in 1815 for £90. Sir Robert Peel bought
it in 1829 for £800. It is said to have been restored and retouched
by Reinagle (see Mrs. Jameson's _Handbook to the Private Galleries of
London_, p. 354 _n._).