Little is known about the life of the landscape painter Meindert Hobbema. He signed his first painting at the age of twenty. Although he lived in Amsterdam almost ail his life, most of his landscapes were produced in the eastern provinces of the Netherlands. Hobbema had a special predilection for peaceful landscapes with houses, canals, and water-mills. He painted considerably less after 1668, when he took up a position as a wine inspector for the Customs Office in Amsterdam. His sentimental approach to landscape would later influence British landscape artists in the nineteenth century.