Wooded Landscape with Figures

In this quiet landscape scene, two men chat as they amble along a rutted road atop a dike that separates verdant woods from low-lying fields and their drainage ditches. The substantial buildings, churches, and towers that rise along the horizon may represent Amsterdam, Meindert Hobbema’s native city, but the town is so distant that it barely intrudes on the painting’s overriding sense of nature.

The light and delicate quality of this work is characteristic of paintings executed by Hobbema in the late 1650s, before he began his apprenticeship with Jacob van Ruisdael, who moved to Amsterdam from Haarlem in 1657. The subtle mood of this scene is strikingly different from the more robust landscapes Hobbema executed from the early 1660s onward as a result of Van Ruisdael’s influence. The distinctive signature MHobbema (with the M and H joined) also points to an early work.

Hobbema was more interested in capturing the gentle rhythms of nature than the human presence, and his reticence to include many figures probably derived from his relative weakness as a figure painter. Hobbema did depict three people, although small in scale. A tiny figure, barely discernable along the tree line near the curve of the dike, amplifies the suggestion of depth and distance. The two men in the middle of the road, one wearing a red jacket and one carrying a white sack on his shoulder, actually serve another important function: not only do they provide an engaging pictorial accent that enhances the scene’s pleasant charm, but they also suggest those quiet moments of communication that are so important in human existence.