oming, and dark sheets of water overshadowed by
trees, lending a melancholy sentiment to the picture. He was fond of
wide expanses of land and water, fond also of introducing the spires of
his native Haarlem, touching the horizon line. He has left a few
sea-pieces, always with cloudy heavens and heaving or raging seas;[55]
where he has given sketches of sea, and shore, the aerial perspective is
rendered in tender gradations 'full of pathos.' He has other pictures
representing hilly, even mountainous, landscapes. In these foaming
waterfalls form a prominent feature. Ruysdael was weak in his drawing of
men and animals, in which he was occasionally assisted by
fellow-artists, such as Berchem and Van de Velde. Among his finest
pictures are 'A View of the Country round Haarlem,' in the Museum of the
Hague; 'A flat country, with a road leading to a village and fields with
wheat sheaves,' in the Dresden Gallery; 'A hilly bare country through
which a river runs; the horseman and beggar on a bridge, by
Wouvermans,' in the Louvre. His most remarkable waterfall is in the
Hague Museum. In the Dresden Gallery there is 'A Jewish Cemetery,' 'full
of melancholy.' Three of Ruysdael's fine waterfalls are in the National
Gallery. Of two very grand storms which he painted one is in the Louvre,
the other in the collection of the Marquis of Lansdowne at Bowood. There
are many of Ruysdael's pictures in England. In the great landscape
painter, as in the other renowned Dutch artists of the seventeenth
century, the influence of Rembrandt is marked.

Meindert Hobbema was born in 1638, married in 1638, and died in poverty
at Amsterdam in 1709. His works, which were neglected in his lifetime,
now fetch much more than their weight in gold. Sums as large as four
thousand pounds have been paid more than once for a Hobbema, yet his
name was not found in any dictionary of art or artists for more than a
century after his death. The English were the first to acknowledge
Hobbema's merit, and nine-tenths of his works are in England, where he
is the most popular Dutch landscape painter. But he is said by judges to
have less invention and less poetic sensibility than his contemporary
and friend Ruysdael. Hobbema's subjects are usually villages surrounded
by trees like those in Guelderland, water-mills, a slightly broken
country, with groups of trees, wheatfields, meadows, and small pools,
more rarely portions of towns, and still more seldom old castles and
st