A Watermill beside a Woody Lane

This Watermill beside a Woody Lane in the Royal Collection combines Hobbema's two most characteristic motifs — watermill and woodland road — in a composition from his mature period. The Royal Collection's extensive Dutch and Flemish holdings, acquired through royal patronage over centuries, include multiple examples of Hobbema's work alongside the Rembrandts, Vermeers, and other Dutch masters that make it one of the world's great repositories of seventeenth-century Northern painting. The combination of watermill and wooded lane in a single composition gave collectors both his most popular subjects simultaneously, and such combined motif paintings were among his most commercially successful works.

The composition guides the viewer along the wooded lane toward the watermill, Hobbema's careful rendering of spatial recession through alternating patches of light and shadow creating a convincing sense of natural depth.