River and Rural Scene

Discussion

FROM THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO’S CATALOG

The English printmaker Richard Earlom produced multiple mezzotints of Old Master works, including this scene by the 17th-century Dutch painter Meindert Hobbema. Characteristic of Hobbema’s style is the shaded foreground, with occasional flickers of light that lengthen the shadows of figures and cows and contrast with an area of warm light in the background. Hobbema’s works show a desire to present landscape as an idyllic environment, ordered and regulated by man, an idea that spoke to Earlom, as is clear in many of his own orderly landscapes and market scenes.

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