The Drenthe Hobbema To understand Egbert van Drielst, one must look past the decorative surface of his wallpaper designs and focus on his precise imitation of the seventeenth-century Dutch landscape tradition. He was not an innovator of form, but a skilled technician of memory. Working primarily between 1760 and 1818, he reconstructed the atmosphere of a bygone era by studying the works of Meindert Hobbema and Jacob van Ruisdael. His reputation rests on this ability to replicate the textures of the Dutch wilderness, specifically the uncultivated stretches of Drenthe. His training was far fr…