Earthwork out of Tuscany (London, 1895).

THE AVENUE OF MIDDELHARNAIS

(HOBBEMA)

PAUL LAFOND

Some small and slender trees, branchless almost to their tops, border the two sides of a road, which occupies the centre of the picture, and extend all the way to a village which closes the horizon with several masts and hulls of ships in profile against a sky where the sun is veiled; to the right, a nursery-garden of shrubs and rose-trees separated from the road by a wide ditch full of water; then, in the middle distance, the buildings of a farm; to the left, a clump of trees and another ditch, and further back the spire of a church; a huntsman, with a gun on his shoulder and preceded by his dog, is walking on the road, and two peasants—­a man and a woman—­have stopped to chat on the path that leads across to the farm; a horticulturist is grafting the shrubs in the nursery-garden; and this corner of a landscape has sufficed for Hobbema to produce a masterpiece which the National Gallery of London is justly proud to possess.  This youngest of the great European Museums is not the poorest and owns very considerable works of every school.

[Illustration:  THE AVENUE OF MIDDELHARNAIS.
        Hobbema.]

What is most admired in this picture of the Dutch Master?  The firmness of touch, the brilliancy of the key, the ease and breadth of execution without the slightest sign of hesitation or alteration, or the extraordinary perfection with which the perspective is rendered?  We do not know.  Despite the complexity of the subject, the one defect of which may be a slight lack of unity in the composition, the general effect of the picture is simple and powerful, and the gradation of colour harmonious and correct.  It would be impossible to go any farther than this artist has done in the interpretation of this tranquil Dutch landscape.  The deep values of the trees, the yellowish greys of the road, and the sluggish water of the ditches, together with the blue sky flecked with little grey and white clouds produce an ensemble of absolute calm.  The little figures which give life to this canvas are so fine and delicate in execution that they leave nothing to be desired.  Here, as very rarely happens, the multiplication of details does not spoil the effect of the whole.

This is a picture absolutely without a peer, and a page by itself in Hobbema’s work.  This is true in every sense, even in the choice of subject; for most frequently the painter borrows the motives for his pictures from a different phase of nature.  Ordinarily he interprets forest-clearings; the skirts of a wood with poor huts hidden by great trees; calm and fresh pools; and streams feeding humble mills.  Witness the one in the Louvre for which he showed so great a predilection and which he reproduced under so many varied aspects.