(Amsterdam 1638–1709)
A wooded landscape with water mills,
signed lower left: Hobbema,
oil on panel, 29.2 x 41 cm, framed

Provenance:
Halford Baronets (according to their coat-of-arms on the reverse);
with Agnews, London (according to a fragment of a label on the reverse)

The present panel, depicting a sun-dappled rustic river landscape, with a mill and thickly studded with trees rustled by a soft wind, is a typically idyllic work by Meindert Hobbema. Along with his tutor and friend Jacob van Ruisdael, with whom he travelled the Dutch countryside, drawing from life, Hobbema is one of the foremost landscapists of the Golden Age.

Illustrating the meticulousness of Hobbema’s composition, the twisting foliage here gently leads the eye into the picture space, in way which is more gentle than van Ruisdael’s dramatic conception of Netherlandish landscapes. The darkening clouds and the voluminous leafy forms of the trees are, however, rendered in a way that preserves a certain bucolic grandeur. An Amsterdamer by birth, and spending his whole life there, Hobbema married a servant of the burgomaster of Amsterdam and through her influence became a minor official, checking weights and measures of imported wines. His artistic output appears to have dropped following his becoming a petty functionary, and the present panel is likely from before that date.

The present panel bears the arms of the Halford Baronets, formerly of Wistow Hall in Leicestershire. Richard Halford, was created a baronet by Charles I for loyal service in the English Civil War, and the family latterly were physicians to the royal family in the nineteenth century.