His masterpiece is The Paths of Middelharnis, or simply The Path of the Merging Trees (also translated as The Village Path, The Boulevard, The Clip Tree Path, The Wooded Path, The Wooded Village Path, The Wooded Wooded Path, The Paths of Middelharnis, The Avenue of Middelharnis, and The Boulevard of Middelharnis), painted in 1689, 103.5 x 104.9 cm, now in the National Gallery, London
Hobbema was a pupil of Ruisdael (Jacob. Van. Ruisdael 1628/1629-1682), and it is self-evident that he was influenced by his master's technique, but he did not end up with the same artistic style, nor was he as prolific as Ruisdael. Generally speaking, the mood of Ruysdael's landscapes tends to be melancholic and sad, while Hobbema's pictures are brighter and plainer, and also have a more cheerful atmosphere. This is mainly due to the fact that the former mostly depicts barren hills and marshes, silver-gray skies and vast plains, while each of the latter's paintings is like a pastoral song, with a light, earthy air. The tranquility of the countryside is otherworldly and mesmerizing. In particular, this painting, "And Tree Road," plays on this aspect with more care and meticulousness, and is also the most praised.
This painting, which has now become a classical landscape painting, depicts an extremely ordinary muddy village road with many ruts of different shades, lined with thin and tall trees, which are both symmetrical and varied. At the other end of the path, a villager is standing with an animal, and on a forked path to the right, there are two rural women talking and walking at the same time; in the close up view to the right is a plantation, and a farmer's wife is pruning the branches. The horizon is lower, the sky leaves more space, the artist has more possibilities to depict the beautiful sky above the clouds.
How can such a bland picture have so much artistic charm? A good landscape painting is always a blend of emotion and scenery. Hobbema is an idyllic landscape painter with strong feelings for his hometown. Although he did not produce many works in his life, he made field observations for each painting and seriously experienced the beauty and poetry of nature. The "Road with Trees" shows the beauty of a far-reaching perspective of a countryside landscape. The artist uses the language of poetry to reproduce this idyllic landscape with a strong sense of perspective, giving the viewer a sense of beauty that soothes the soul. Looking into the distance makes people relaxed and happy, the two sides are so symmetrical and appear to be very smooth, but the subtle, rhythmic, varied and uniform details are like the jumping notes on the piano with slight variations in strength and weakness, which are not monotonous in the least, but on the contrary, appear to be relaxed and happy. The rows of branches are staggered, the dark bushes in the near distance are sparsely interspersed with planted forests, and in the distance there is a church spire on the left and two high-roofed cottages on the right, all of which have been carefully conceived by the artist. The strict perspective vanishing point takes the viewer's mood into the distance as well. Because this painting successfully demonstrates the technique of focal perspective, it has been used as a classic demonstration work in the teaching of art techniques.
The diversity of subjects in Dutch painting mirrors the richness of social life in the Netherlands, and in the case of landscapes, these two masters - Ruisdal and Hobbema - show us the richness and colorfulness of nature in the Dutch countryside.
Here is what the literati had to say about Hobbema's chequered life.
How far is Amsterdam from Xiaotangchong?
This is obviously an absurd query, a puzzling and inexplicable conjecture, for they are two very different villages in two very different countries.
Amsterdam was the home of the 16th-century Dutch painter Hobbema.
Xiaotangchong, however, is my home.
I know that there is no relationship between these two villages in different countries, but every time I read any of Hobbema's landscapes, I am tempted to associate Amsterdam with my hometown, Xiaotangchong. This association allows me to see up close how Hobbema grazes Amsterdam with his paintbrushes. It is true, Hobbema was one of the greatest and most accomplished shepherds of all time. He grazed Amsterdam all his life. He spread a boundless meadow for Amsterdam with bright and vivid glazes, and then the birches, the waterwheels, the ponds, the farmhouses, the wheat fields, all of this was driven to me by Hobermar's brush, and I found that all of these landscapes and objects were like spiritual sheep and cows gathering in the meadow of art that Hobermar had constructed. I saw all the trees, villages, gardens, ponds, or all the scenery and objects in Amsterdam like fat cows circling the grassland constructed by Hobbema, emitting a strong and refreshing smell of milk. But then, at the same time, I also saw a whip, I saw this whip through the Dutch smoke cloud of the middle of the seventeenth century is towards the Hobbema carefully fed the herd of cows cracked head and head. Hobbema looked at the whip as if he had suddenly discovered a beast, and wondered why Dutch society had so denied and ostracized his careful grazing of this realist art, and he could only weep at the wounded cows.
Hoberma's paintings were not accepted by the Dutch school until after the eighteenth century. This makes it easy to extrapolate that by then, Hobbema had been dead for nearly two hundred years. The history of Dutch painting does not tell us much about how Hobbema grazed his landscapes due to the long period of neglect. It is only known that Hobbema was eventually forced to give up painting, because his paintings could not help him to maintain a normal life. Why was there no room for Hobbema under the Dutch sky? The answer to this question seems to be found in Van Gogh, who was born in the 18th century. Van Gogh and Hobbema were both poor because of their paintings, but they were both geniuses at the same time. If Hobbema knew that behind him there was another genius like a yellow leaf born in the same country as his **** will be as unlucky as him, the same poor, Hobbema will not interrupt his landscape painting?
Fortunately, it was an interruption, not an abandonment.
Once again, if we compare Hobbema's obsession with landscapes to herding, the interruption would be like driving a herd of beloved sheep and cows out of the pasture and into a dark room, where he would then live with them. There would have been a bright light in the dark room, as hot as the sun as bright as the moon as warm as starlight. Needless to say, this was Hobbema's soul. Though the light of the soul could not dispel the entanglements of poverty, it could shine through the herd of cattle and sheep that had lost their pasture. Through this bright and intense light, we can even see these sheep and cows, which were helplessly locked up in the dark room, wiping the dust and sorrow in Hobbema's eyes with their simple but noble fur, and singing for Hobbema's poverty with their touching mooing.
Hobbema was indeed melancholy. But he never infuses the sadness into his glazes like his revered teacher Ruysdael did, making the paintings somber and poignant. Hobbema and his respected teacher Ruisdael diametrically opposite, he did not want to paint in his glaze mixed with a drop of tears and a sigh, he will be all the misery of life into a lamp and the oil in the lamp, and let it burn permanently, so that the burning flame in the dark room to wait for, accompanied by his cows and sheep and his spirit of the pasture.
At this time, although Hobbema would also appear in some of the salon meeting places in Holland, he was not ostracized for his paintings, and his fattened cows and sheep were whipped and driven to raise the butcher's knife to decimate his own well-fed cows and lambs. Even in the midst of extreme poverty, Hobbema never forgot his role as a shepherd boy, a frail and old shepherd boy. He still wears a tattered golden straw hat, carries a whip, and leads a sheepdog as thin and as old as he is as he walks leisurely through a huge pasture that is farther than the Netherlands or even the whole of Europe. The fresh breeze blew his tousled hair, which fluttered like the branches of the birches that surrounded his village, and made a whistling sound that was full of calls. The noonday sun poured down like golden grains of wheat through the densely-packed holes of his golden straw hat. This was his exquisite grain. With these grains feeding and nourishing him, countless times he was starving and did not fall down beside his cows after all. The cows' gaze supported his weary body like birches, which filled Hobbema with an almost grateful love for them, even though he had originally fattened and fed them by hand.
Hobbema knew that poverty was always watching his steps with bloodshot eyes, and that it would not be easy to escape from it, but he never stopped walking. He wanted to fight poverty with endless walking, to defeat the power of poverty. He wanted to find his way back home. Even though he had lived in Amsterdam all his life, he felt that Amsterdam was both his birthplace and his home. It was the territory from which he had traveled and then to which he would arrive. Both his birthplace and his home are in the same village, but he has spent his whole life walking.
The distance traveled is no longer than the distance between the sky and the mind.
More often than not, the sky is closer to us and the mind is farther away.
We always want to go home, but all our lives we have not been able to approach our homes and reach them.
That's why I often attach my hometown Xiaotang Village to Hobbema's hometown, Amsterdam.
Because I had to follow Hobbema home, I had to follow him and watch how the quiet Hobbema chose his way home.
Hobbema did not give up his nomadic life. In 1689, at the age of 51, the year before he was to say goodbye forever to Amsterdam, to the sky and the earth, the waterwheel and the pond, the villages and the fields that he loved, and to the hustle and bustle of the world and its tranquillity, there suddenly came out of his boundless pastures an amazing black horse, a black horse that could have made Hoberman hold his head high in the presence of all the masterpieces of the world's fine arts, and of all the outstanding painters of the landscape, which was the black horse that would have made Hoberman stand out in front of all the masterpieces of the world's fine arts, and of all the outstanding landscape painters. The painting that stands tall before him is his masterpiece, "The Woodland Trail".
So I saw Hobbema again and again, naughty and mischievous, like a shepherd boy, riding this black horse from Amsterdam, whistling a tune, looking around, with the same old straw hat on his head, and the sunlight pouring down through the holes of the straw hat like golden grains of wheat. He walked in such a calm and peaceful manner, from the entrance of the village of Amsterdam towards the Dutch upper class, towards the whole of Europe, and finally, with a wave of the whip, this black horse crashed headlong into the National Gallery in London, England. This walk, Hobbema foot nearly two hundred years.
"Woodland Trail" has several translations, some people translate him as "boulevard", also has been translated as "village road". Despite the differences in the translations, none of them has lost sight of the word "road".
This is indeed a muddy village road. The birches on both sides of the road shoot out into the endless wilderness like two soft but sharp gazes, and then gather in the distance. The church on the left and the farmhouse on the right form a kind of religious remoteness and return. How is it that the sky hangs so low in Amsterdam? The clouds in that sky looked so heavy and so light that they seemed ready to fall and press down on Hobbema's head. Also, was the man holding a dog the same Hobbema who had just returned from herding?
Trailing Hobbema, I was tempted to tell him about this implication of what I was seeing, but in the end I didn't have the courage to say so, for fear that Hobbema would despise my shallow understanding of The Woodland Trail. In the end, however, I couldn't resist asking Hobbema, very foolishly, if this was your way home?
Hobbema didn't answer me; he just gave me a pale, blazing look that signaled me to follow him. That look clearly told me that my hometown of Xiaotangchong could be reached from Amsterdam as well. For all paths to the home of the soul are connected