The Anglers

The Dutch artist Meindert Lubbertsz, called Hobbema, is widely regarded as the true inventor of the picturesque wooded landscape. His work was widely collected in Norfolk in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Its popularity in the region may be partially explained by the similarity of the landscape between the two regions.

Hobbema's work inspired two centuries of landscape painters, particularly in Britain, and especially John Crome and the Norwich School artists. The vignette, or picture within a picture, created by the receding landscape to the right of this painting was a favourite device of Hobbema's, and one that Norwich School artists often used in their paintings.