Meindert Hobbema was a Dutch Golden Age landscape painter. Born to Lubbert Meynerts and Rinsje Eduwarts, Hobbema was baptized as Meyndert Lubbertsz in Amsterdam on October 31, 1638. At the age of 15, he and his younger brother and sister are recorded as having been sent to an orphanage. Although he signed his name M. Hobbema on paintings as early as 1658, he used only his baptized name on legal documents until 1660. Meindert Hobbema married Eeltien (Eeltje) Vinck in the Oude Kerk (Old Church) at Amsterdam, on 2 November 1668. Vinck was a kitchen maid to Lambert Reynst, a burgomaster of Amsterdam. Witnesses to the marriage were the bride’s brother Cornelius Vinck and the landscape painter Jacob van Ruisdael. It is documented that Ruisdael was Hobbema’s teacher, as in July 1660 Ruisdael testified Hobbema “served and learned with me for several years.” In the same year Hobbema married, he took up the well-paid post of municipal wine gauger for the Amsterdam octroi (civic tax collectors), a job that involved the weighing and measuring of imported wines. With a wife, a job and a salary, his painting output slowed down considerably. Hobbema and his wife had five children and lived in the Rozengracht, not far from Rembrandt, who moved there in his later and impoverished days. In 1704 Eeltien died and was buried in the pauper section of the Leiden cemetery at Amsterdam. Hobbema survived until late 1709 and was buried a pauper on 14 December in the Westerkerk cemetery at Amsterdam.