Wooded Landscape with the Ruins of a House

Executed in 1663, this work belongs to the most productive phase of Hobbema's painting career, before he took a position as a wine-gauger for the Amsterdam excise in 1668 and largely abandoned painting. Ruins of abandoned farmhouses or cottages were recurring motifs in Dutch Baroque landscape, evoking the contrast between human transience and the endurance of nature. Hobbema treated such subjects with less of Ruisdael's melancholy grandeur and more interest in the dappled interplay of light through woodland. The painting demonstrates his characteristic ability to make an unremarkable piece of Dutch countryside feel quietly monumental.

Broken cloud light filters through a dense canopy of oaks, casting shifting patches of sun on the undergrowth and the crumbling walls. Hobbema's brushwork in the foliage is more vigorous than Dou or the Leiden school — loose and flecked — while the ground is built up with warm ochres and cool greens.