Landscape near Deventer

The museum's Dutch title calls this an imaginary view of Deventer, and that describes it well. The twin spires on the left belong to the Bergkerk, a church in Deventer, an old Hanseatic town on the IJssel far to the east of Amsterdam. The oaks, the sandy path and the pool in front of them are Hobbema's own arrangement.

Around 1661 Hobbema seems to have travelled east through the Veluwe, the heathland of Gelderland, to Deventer and on to Ootmarsum near the German border, possibly together with Jacob van Ruisdael. The drawings he brought back fed his pictures for years, and he usually tucked the real buildings into the background of invented woodland, as he did here around 1662 or 1663. Much later he painted the Bergkerk once more, in a landscape now in Edinburgh.

This panel was given to the Mauritshuis in 1950 by E. Vis of Lausanne. The museum shows it in the Gallery Prince Willem V in The Hague.