Wooded Landscape

On 8 July 1660, in Amsterdam, the landscape painter Jacob van Ruisdael gave a formal statement about a young man of 21, Meindert Hobbema. Hobbema, he declared, had served and learned with him for several years and was of good character. Hobbema had lost his mother as a child and had been placed in the city orphanage, and the testimony was probably meant for those still responsible for him. This panel was painted at almost exactly that moment, around 1660 or 1661, and the museum counts it among Hobbema's earliest works. It wears its training openly. The museum notes that the towering oaks against the cloudy sky recall the pictures of Ruisdael, his teacher.