The great expanse of sky over all, inspired a numerous company of landscape painters, includ ing that great master Jacob~ Ruysdael, and, among the rest, Hobbema, Van der Neer, De Koninck, Albert Cuyp, the Van der Velde family, and Backhuysen. It was Holland and its people, almost exclusively, that these painters took for their subject. They restricted themselves, or, rather, the existing conditions restricted them, to first-hand interpretation of life and nature.
