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Meindert Hobbema

Meindert HOBBEMA
Dutch 1638-1709
The old oak
1662
oil on canvas
101.0 x 144.0 cm

As I entered the 17th century European gallery, Meindert Hobbemas’ The old Oak caught my attention immediately. Amongst the other, predominantly Dutch, European paintings within the gallery space it seemed to have a manner of romance and almost whimsicality. It appeared as though it maybe didn’t even belong at all in the midst of portraits and interiors, and it was maybe this that drew me to it.

At first I was drawn straight to the large dark tree, located on the left-hand side of the painting, with its twisted extended branches directing the eye to wander up into the weightless clouded dusk sky where there is a lightness and an ease before you are pulled back down to the darkness on the right-hand side of the painting, before travelling along the bottom third of the scene and returned to the Oak tree. I believe the tree itself was intended to be the most important element within the image, not only because it is the title of the painting, but because it spans almost one half of the entire composition. Its gentle branches invite you to follow its direction and Hobbema's large, luminous composition feature a masterly draftsmanship and painstaking detail with his subdued palette. His idyllic landscape is carefully composed and features meticulous rendering of twisted foliage and gentle terrain. Although perhaps it is the almost invisible human and animal figures that Hobbema meant to be a subtle element in their insignificance within this wild and grand Dutch countryside. The human figure upon a horse followed by faithful dog at the bottom left, the two figures in the background, and the two specks of birds in the very foreground posses very little, if any, detail at all. It certainly does seem that it is the Oak tree that dominates all within this simplistic and almost banal scene.

Meindert Hobbema being a Dutch painter, and one of the most important Baroque landscapists of the Dutch school, lived all his life in Amsterdam. He was a friend and pupil of Jacob van Ruisdael where the two made sketching tours together and often painted the same views. Hobbema was generally regarded as second only to Ruisdael in importance among Dutch landscapists. His favorite subject matter was the wooded countryside; his scenes include villages, farmhouses, tree-shaded streams and water mills. Hobbema softened Ruisdael's dramatic conception of landscape but retained a certain inventive grandeur in his views of the Dutch countryside. Hobbema's work did not achieve full recognition until after his death, when his superbly organized, tranquil scenes were appreciated as the final masterpieces of the Dutch landscape tradition in painting.

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