Rural Landscape with Figures

Meindert Hobbema is considered one of the finest of the seventeenth-century Dutch masters of landscape painting.  His peaceful wooded scenes with their meticulous attention to leaves and blades of grass exerted great influence in the development of landscape painting throughout Europe during the next two-hundred years.  He was a student and friend of Jacob van Ruisdael, but his quiet, sun-dappled compositions, often based upon his observation of actual locations, differ greatly from Ruisdael's more dramatic clouds and skies.

Rural Landscape depicts a tranquil lake set in a forest of slender, feathery trees.  The three small figures the distant church spire in the painting refer to man and religion, but are typically subordinate to the grandeur of the natural setting.