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The Watermill with the Great Red Roof

Landscape painting featuring a wavy tree tree in the foreground and a watermill with a red roof adjacent to a river at right. Colors are subdued earth tones, the foliage a dark green and the river a muddy brown. Water flows through the mill wheel under a cloudy sky of gray and blue. Three individuals can be seen in the distance at left.
CC0 Public Domain Designation

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  • Landscape painting featuring a wavy tree tree in the foreground and a watermill with a red roof adjacent to a river at right. Colors are subdued earth tones, the foliage a dark green and the river a muddy brown. Water flows through the mill wheel under a cloudy sky of gray and blue. Three individuals can be seen in the distance at left.

Date:

1662/65

Artist:

Meindert Hobbema
Dutch, 1638–1709

About this artwork

A pupil of Jacob van Ruisdael, whose work is also on view in this gallery, 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.

1665–1675

Medium

Oil on canvas

Inscriptions

Inscribed, lower left: hobbema

Dimensions

81.3 × 110 cm (32 × 43 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

Extended information about this artwork

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

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