Meindert Hobbema, 'A Road winding past Cottages', about 1667-8

Meindert Hobbema liked nothing better than to take you for a walk. He leads us onwards and leaves us feeling fresh and windblown. In this painting, his trees are stunted and bent as if blown by a sea wind. Birds wheel overhead in a restless sky, the clouds scudding high and fast. It’s easy to feel that if you turn away they might have changed shape when you look back.

He leads us into the painting by the patches of sun that follow one another up the canvas – but into the picture – making the image appear three-dimensional. This method of perspective was often employed by landscape painters at the time. Hobbema gives us sudden glimpses of secret places between the spindly trees. Even the cottages are half hidden, seeming to reveal themselves reluctantly in the undergrowth. Far ahead, where the clouds tower highest, there is perhaps a suggestion of the sea.

On the central path, a woman with a boy at her side is engaged in conversation with the young man. Less obvious is the shadowy figure in the doorway of one of the cottages, and the couple marching at a good pace, the red of the woman’s skirt lighting up the many greens of the picture. Further ahead is another couple, wandering hand in hand towards the white picket fence of the cottage glinting in the sun. By making the figures appear smaller and smaller, Hobbema creates depth and entertains us with interesting characters of all ages with a few strokes of the brush.

The finely painted leaves are so detailed that it’s possible to recognise, if not to identify, at least three different species. The tree close to us appears to have small, rounded leaves. The one a little further off on the right has longer fronds of elongated leaves. The foliage of the third, albeit lit by the sun and therefore much lighter in colour, appears more delicate. Outside many large towns in the Dutch Republic large parklands could often be found, open to the public, where urban people went in their leisure time. A picture of such a place would be a treasured reminder of those times.

Hobbema lived in Amsterdam all his life. He trained with the great landscape painter Jacob van Ruisdael. The two travelled around Holland and elsewhere together, making sketches that they later made use of when composing pictures in the studio. They put parts of their drawings together, moving elements of a scene to enhance the composition, or they would paint a completely imaginary landscape. But they were always recognisably Dutch scenes. Many chose not to romanticise the countryside as some later artists did in an attempt to portray the exotic – the Netherlands are flat and so, in many cases, are their landscapes. They painted the trees and plants that they and their patrons knew. Van Ruisdael’s pictures are dramatic, with waterfalls, threatening clouds and broken trees. Hobbema’s are quieter, simple rustic moments, in which the enquiring eye is led towards the distance.