The Watermill with the Great Red Roof
Meindert Hobbema·c. 1665
Historical Context
The Watermill with the Great Red Roof (c. 1665) is one of Hobbema's most celebrated paintings, combining his two greatest subjects — woodland and watermill — in a composition of luminous freshness. A student of Ruisdael, Hobbema developed a lighter, more immediately pleasurable vision of the Dutch countryside, replacing his teacher's sublime grandeur with a domesticated rural beauty that proved enormously popular with collectors. The dramatically red roof of the mill — an almost startling chromatic accent in the green and brown landscape — shows his calculated use of color contrast to organize the composition. After his marriage in 1668 Hobbema largely abandoned painting, making his output from the 1660s particularly precious.
Technical Analysis
Hobbema's technique renders the distinctive red roof with warm, saturated color that provides a vivid focal point within the green landscape. The trees are painted with his characteristic attention to individual forms, each one carefully observed and differentiated. The water reflections and sky are handled with luminous, atmospheric brushwork.
Provenance
Possibly John Ellis, London 1755 [according to Smith 1835]. Possibly Lord Mount Temple [Hofstede de Groot cites Durand Ruel as the source of this information]. Durand-Ruel, Paris, by 1890; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, June 1890, together with a group of Dutch and Flemish paintings, many from the Demidoff collection, using funds advanced by four trustees and reimbursed through the gift of Mr. and Mrs. Frank G. Logan in 1903 [sale agreement in Art Institute Archives; in the case of 1894.1031, there is no evidence that it was in the Demidoff collection].
