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In the early seventeenth century the dominant trend in Dutch landscape painting was for harmonious and flat coastal scenes, exemplified by in the work of Jan van Goyen and Salomon van Ruysdael. In the second half of the century, however, there was a tendency to dramatize nature, as in the night scenes by Aert van der Neer and Jacob van Ruisdael's romantically dramatic paintings of ruins, cascading waterfalls and stormy weather.
Meyndert Hobbema was a pupil of Jacob van Ruisdael and followed the dramatic landscape tradition. One of his favourite motifs was the landscape with watermill. At least thirty paintings by him depict watermills in different landscape surroundings and from different perspectives. The present painting is a typical example.
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