Active in Amsterdam, landscape painter Meindert Hobbema met Jacob van Ruisdael sometime before 1659 and became his leading pupil and friend. When Hobbema married the kitchen maid of an Amsterdam official in 1668, Ruisdael was a witness. Early on, Hobbema imitated Ruisdael's style, but by 1663 he had found his own. His sunlit woodland scenes, opened up by roads and glistening ponds, and his views o
