Wooded Landscape with Cottages

For 160 years this landscape stayed in one family. The Grosvenors, later the Dukes of Westminster, owned it from 1806 until a sale in 1966. Among its later owners were Britain's railway workers. In 1974, with inflation above 15 percent, the pension fund of British Rail, the state railway company, began putting part of its money into art, and this Hobbema ended up in its collection. The fund sold it at Sotheby's in London in December 1994, and the Mauritshuis bought it that same year with help from the Dutch state and several foundations. The picture itself dates from 1665. A hunter on a white horse comes along the sandy road with his dogs, and beyond the big trees the path runs past a small pool where, the museum notes, children are sailing a little boat.