The Mills, between 1664 and 1668 (oil)

The Watermills (Main title); The Watermills of Deventer (Assigned title) Hobbema, Meindert Meindert Hobbema could be called the "painter of windmills", such was the influence of the windmill motif on his work. Here we recognize the mills of Deventer, a town in eastern Holland, which the painter discovered on a trip with his master, Jacob van Ruisdael, in the 1660s. He brought back numerous sketches, which he then reused at will, recomposing them in the studio from motifs captured "on the spot", in the middle of nature, so that his mills take place in a verdant countryside when they were, in fact, located in an urban setting. In this way, Hobbema lends his paintings a picturesque, poetic quality. The red-roofed mill, its virtuoso reflection in the water, the light that bathes nature, and the various figures that animate it all contribute to making this landscape a small haven of peace. The mill motif has sometimes been seen as an evocation of human destiny and an illustration of the ingenuity of Dutch engineers. Valuing the grandeur of the Golden Age, the work in the Petit Palais is a veritable manifesto of 17th-century Dutch life, reinvented by painters to create an ideal image of nature. Inventory number: PDUT905