The Watermill with the Great Red Roof

CC0 Public Domain Designation

c. 1665

Meindert Hobbema (Dutch, 1638–1709)

A pupil of Jacob van Ruisdael, Meindert Hobbema often borrowed motifs from his teacher, such as the watermill seen here. Watermills, which Hobbema employed more than 30 times in his paintings and which abounded along country waterways, would have been understood as symbols of human transience and Dutch industriousness. The well-dressed figures farther along the path at the left are intended to suggest the rewards of productivity and diligence.

Status: On View, Gallery 213
Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Artist: Meindert Hobbema
Title: The Watermill with the Great Red Roof
Place: Holland (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1660–1670
Medium: Oil on canvas
Inscriptions: Inscribed lower left: hobbema
Dimensions: 81.3 × 110 cm (32 × 43 1/4 in.); Framed: 101.3 × 130.5 × 8.3 cm (39 7/8 × 51 3/8 × 3 1/4 in.)
Credit Line: Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Frank G. Logan
Reference Number: 1894.1031
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/869/manifest.json

John Smith, Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch and Flemish Painters, vol. 6, London, 1835, pp. 151-52, no. 105.
“Rare Old Paintings. Works of Famous Dutch Masters at the Art Institute,”Chicago Post, November 7, 1890.
Art Institute of Chicago, Catalogue of Objects in the Museum, 1895, no. 164.
Art Institute of Chicago, General Catalogue of Paintings, Sculpture and other Objects of Art in the Museum, 1901, p. 148, no. 16 ill.
Frederick W. Morton, “Notable Art Works at Pittsburg,” Brush and Pencil 11, 3 (1902), pp. 182, 191 (ill.).
Art Institute of Chicago, General Catalogue of Paintings, Sculpture and other Objects of Art in the Museum, 1904, pp. 153-4, no. 16, ill.
Art Institute of Chicago, Important facts regarding The Art Institute of Chicago with reproductions of the Demidoff Masterpieces, Chicago, 1905, p. 9, ill. p. 16.
Art Institute of Chicago, General Catalogue of Sculpture, Paintings, and Other Objects, 1907, pp. 164-5, no. 16, ill.
Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century Based on the Work of John Smith, trans. Edward G. Hawke, vol. 4, London, 1912, p. 377, no. 71.
Art Institute of Chicago, A Handbook of Paintings, Chicago, 1920, p. 19, no. 16.
Art Institute of Chicago, A Guide to the Paintings in the Permanent Collection, Chicago, 1925, pp. 19 ill, 140, no. 16.
Art Institute of Chicago, A Guide to the Paintings in the Permanent Collection, Chicago, 1932, pp. 25 ill., 157.
Daniel Catton Rich, “Die Ausstellung ‘Fünf Jahrhunderte der Frühmalerei’ in Chicago,” Pantheon12 (1933), p. 380
Georges Brouhiet, Meindert Hobbema, Paris, 1938, p. 378, no. 13, fig. 13.
Adolph Goldschmidt, “The Style of Dutch Painting in the Seventeenth Century,” The Art Quarterly 2 (1939), p, 8, fig. 10.
Charles Fabens Kelley, “Chicago: Record Years,” Art News 51, 4 (1952), p. 59.
Wolfgang Stechow, “Optic and Opulence: A Brilliant View of Dutch Painting,” Art News 53, 7 (1954), p. 20.
Art Institute of Chicago, Paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Picture Collection, Chicago, 1961, p. 216, ill. p. 192.
Frederick A. Sweet, “Great Chicago Collectors,” Apollo 84, 55 (1966), p. 191.
Wolfgang Stechow, Dutch Landscape Painting of the Seventeenth Century, London, 1966, p. 378, no. 13, ill. p. 109.
Wallace Collection Catalogues, Pictures and Drawings, 16th edition, London, 1968, p. 150, under no. P99.
John Maxon, The Art Institute of Chicago, London, 1970, pp. 261, ill., 282.
Art Institute of Chicago, 100 Masterpieces, Chicago, 1978, pp. 62-63, no. 25, ill.
John D. Morse, Old Master Paintings in North America, New York, 1979, p. 168, ill.
Peter C. Sutton, A Guide to Dutch Art in America, Grand Rapids, 1986, p. 51, ill.
Walter Liedtke, “The Collectors and Their Ideals,” in Ben Broos, Great Dutch Paintings from America, exh. cat. (The Hague, Mauritshuis, 1990), p. 35.
Kendall L. Walton, Mimesis as Make-Believe. On the Foundations of the Representational Arts, Cambridge, Mass., 1990, pp. 293-5, 304-5, fig. 8.1.
Celia Hilliard, “‘The Prime Mover’: Charles L. Hutchinson and the Making of the Art Institute of Chicago,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 36,1 (2010), p. 43, fig. 10.

Pittsburgh, Carnegie Institute, Loan Exhibition of Paintings, 1902/1903, no. 70.
Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Progress, 1933, no. 66.
Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Progress, 1934, no. 93.
New York World’s Fair, Masterpieces of Art, 1939, no. 193.
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Dutch Painting. The Golden Age, An Exhibition of Dutch Pictures of the Seventeenth Century under the High Patronage of Her Majesty the Queen of the Netherlands, 1954/1955, no. 42, traveled to Toledo Museum of Art,.
Art Institute of Chicago, The Artist Looks at the Landscape, 1974, no cat.
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Masters of 17th-Century Dutch Landscape, October 2, 1987- January 3, 1988, cat. 46; Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, February 3-May 1, 1988; Philadelphia Museum of Art, June 5-July 31, 1988.
Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie, Die Entdeckung der Landscaft. Meisterwerke der niederländischen Kunst des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts, 2005, no. 36.

Possibly John Ellis, London 1755 [according to Smith 1835]. Possibly Lord Mount Temple [Hofstede de Groot cites Durand Ruel as the source of this information]. Durand-Ruel, Paris, by 1890; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, June 1890, together with a group of Dutch and Flemish paintings, many from the Demidoff collection, using funds advanced by four trustees and reimbursed through the gift of Mr. and Mrs. Frank G. Logan in 1903 [sale agreement in Art Institute Archives; in the case of 1894.1031, there is no evidence that it was in the Demidoff collection].

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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