A Landscape with a Common and Coppice

This 1663 Landscape with a Common and Coppice at the National Trust captures the managed woodland landscape of the Dutch countryside, where coppicing — the regular cutting of trees to specific heights to produce timber for fuel and fence-making — was a standard practice that shaped the visual character of the landscape. Coppiced woodland had a distinctive appearance — regularly spaced stools of multiple young shoots growing from cut stumps — quite different from the old-growth forest of his oak tree compositions. National Trust properties, with their accumulated Old Master collections, preserve this alongside other examples of the Dutch Golden Age landscape tradition in British domestic contexts.

The coppiced trees with their characteristic multiple stems from cut bases are rendered with observational accuracy, Hobbema documenting the specific appearance of managed woodland alongside his more picturesque forest scenes.