But in the final analysis it is not the manner of an artist that is of most account, but the quality of his appeal. In the case of Van Goyen it is spirituel, not infrequently expressive of spirituality. Transmuted by his vision, the corporeality of the scene has been dissolved into a spiritual impression. It is, as it were, a mirage of nature that is offered to one’s imagination. Van Goyen lacks at once the height and depth of Jacob van Ruisdael; his moods are dreamy rather than poignant, and he appeals where the other compels. But his moods are those of a highly rarefied spirit, that seeks to interpret the bigness and the subtlety of what it feels by means as abstract as possible.
MEINDERT HOBBEMA
Hobbema is the very contrary to Van Goyen. A plain, practical, matter-of-fact man, he is content to paint what he sees, the objective appearances of the landscape, viewed through the unimaginative medium of a healthy naturalism. He was as little addicted to moods of feeling as to dreams; neither curious for new experiences nor moved to artistic ambition, for, having found a motive to his liking, he repeated it again and again with slight variations. Gifted with a strong sense of form and with an unusual faculty of representing it, he learned from Jacob van Ruisdael to cultivate both, but was too phlegmatic to receive inspiration from the master’s genius. Now and then he rose from his usual level to a height of objective grandeur; but for the most part was a prosy bourgeois, pottering round the parish.
He was born in 1638, his birthplace being variously assigned to Haarlem, Koevorden, and the village of Middelharnis, though it may have been Amsterdam, where he spent his life. At the age of thirty he married a maid-servant four years his senior. She had been in a well-to-do family, and through the influence of the latter a place was found for Hobbema in the Wines-customs. It was sufficient to keep him from actual want, but the fact did not spur him on to artistic effort. He painted, it would seem, only when he “felt like it,” which was not often, for the number of his pictures is for a Dutch artist inconsiderable. The earliest date on any of his pictures is 1650; the last that can be assigned with certainty is 1670, for though it is generally accepted that the date
THE AVENUE, MIDDELHARNIS, HOLLAND MEINDERT HOBBEMA
NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON
of The Avenue of Middelharnis, in the National Gallery, is 1689, the “8” is scarcely decipherable. If this date is accepted, it leaves the last twenty years of his life, for he died in 1709, unproductive. No reason for this is known, nor whether he retained his official position; the only fact ascertained being that, like his great master and so many other Dutch artists, he died in extreme poverty.