Support The single, horizontally grained oak plank is approx. 1.3 cm thick. The top edge may have been trimmed. The reverse is bevelled at the bottom, left and right, and has regularly spaced saw marks and plane marks. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1623. The panel could have been ready for use by 1634, but a date in or after 1640 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The single, off-white ground extends up to the edges of the support.
Underdrawing Infrared photography revealed an underdrawing in a dry medium, also partly visible to the naked eye, consisting of rather thick lines contouring the house and horses with carriages on the left and the trees in the centre and on the far right, and indicating the horizon, the boy on the right, as well as several elements not included in the final painting.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the edges of the support. The warm, transparent, dark first lay-in shows through in the subsequent layers of transparent brown and green paints. The buildings and the big tree in the centre were reserved in the sky, but not the trees on the far left and the one on the right. All the figures and animals, apart from the two cows at the bottom left and the two horses and carriages in front of the houses, were applied on top of the background. The final painting diverges considerably from the underdrawing, omitting a man on horseback in front of the house on the left, a third cow between the two at lower left, and two horses led by a figure in front of the rider in the centre. The boy on the right was positioned further to the left than initially planned. Details in both dark and light paints were added in the final stage, several with some impasto. A fingerprint apparently left when making a correction, is visible in the sky, just between the roof of the small building in the middle and the foliage of the central tree.
Zeph Benders, 2022

Fair. Several discoloured retouchings are visible in the sky. The varnish has yellowed severely. At some point the ‘6’ in the date was reinforced with grey paint.

…; sale, Gijsbert de Clercq (1850-1911, Amsterdam), Amsterdam (F. Muller), 1 June 1897, no. 73, bought in;…; from the Vereniging Rembrandt, fl. 75, to the museum, 1901¹¹Verslagen omtrent ’s Rijks verzamelingen van geschiedenis en kunst 1901 (annual report of the Rijksmuseum), p. 13; notes RMA.

Object number: SK-A-1948

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

There are several scenes of travellers at a rural watering place in Aert van der Neer’s early landscapes.⁸⁸Such as Landscape with a Farmhouse, Toledo Museum of Art; illustrated in W. Schulz, Aert van der Neer, Doornspijk 2002, pl. 90; Landscape with Trees, Houses and Five Figures, dated 1635, present whereabouts unknown; illustrated in ibid., pl. 76. All of them are very close to the monochrome paintings by Van Goyen and his many followers in their subject matter and execution. The present picture consists almost entirely of brown and beige tones. It was originally more colourful, but the red pigments have lost some of their force, and the few blues and greens have largely faded. When this panel resurfaced in 1897 at the sale of the De Clercq collection it was immediately recognized as an admittedly clumsy but important early work by the master. However, little was known about that initial period at the time. Since then a considerable number of paintings from 1632-40 have come to light and we know a little more about Van der Neer’s stylistic development.⁹⁹See F. Bachmann, ‘Die Herkunft der Frühwerke des Aert van der Neer’, Oud Holland 89 (1975), pp. 213-22. Van der Neer’s earliest known work, from 1632, reemerged in 1962; see H. Seifertová-Korecká, ‘Das Genrebild des Aert van der Neer in Liberec’, Oud Holland 77 (1962), pp. 57-58, 69.

The present painting is very traditional in its composition, being based on early-seventeenth-century models.¹⁰¹⁰See W. Schulz, Aert van der Neer, Doornspijk 2002, p. 30, who compares it to work by Adriaen van Stalbemt of Antwerp. This applies in particular to the absence of clear framing on the left and right and the placement of a tree in the very centre, which all but demolishes any sense of depth. Other aspects, though, prefigure Van der Neer’s style of the early 1640s, such as the draughtsman-like rendering of the inn and the highlights emphasizing the fall of light on the tree. Many of his earlier works still contain woolly oaks with top-heavy crowns in the manner of the woodland scenes produced by the Flemish Alexander Keirincx in Amsterdam from the late 1620s on.¹¹¹¹A good example is Summer Landscape with Old Trees of 1635, present whereabouts unknown; illustrated in W. Schulz, Aert van der Neer, Doornspijk 2002, col. pl. 28. However, in the Rijksmuseum picture Van der Neer seems to have left that stage firmly behind him.

Infrared photography showed that the composition was prepared very carefully (fig. a). The house on the far left, carriages, figures, trees and landscape were all drawn in precisely beforehand. However, the artist did allow himself some licence in the painting stage, for a figure on horseback in front of the inn, two other horses beside the rider and a cow were omitted in the finished work.

The scene is easily described. Several authors have referred to the building on the left as a farmhouse,¹²¹²Among them W. Schulz, Aert van der Neer, Doornspijk 2002, p. 194. but it is clear from the signboard that it is an inn called ‘De Leeuw’ (The Lion – judging from the colour either The Golden or The White Lion). Standing beside it are two carriages which have just arrived, for the horses are being watered and fed. A dog is rushing up to them. Someone, conceivably the coachman, is just entering the inn. Similar buildings were depicted by many artists around this time, so it would be a type rather than a real tavern. The mounted figure in the centre has often been interpreted as a hunter, probably because of the hounds running ahead of him,¹³¹³See Hofstede de Groot, Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, VII, Esslingen/Paris 1918, p. 367; F. Bachmann, Aert van der Neer 1603/4-1677, Bremen 1982, p. 23. but that is by no means certain, since he does not have any appropriate accoutrements with him. The staff carried by the servant walking beside him, who is presumably his companion, can hardly be regarded as such. It seems, then, that the staffage is an illustration of the general subject of travel.

Erlend de Groot, 2022

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

C. Hofstede de Groot, Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, VII, Esslingen/Paris 1918, p. 367, no. 18; F. Bachmann, Aert van der Neer 1603/4-1677, Bremen 1982, p. 23; W. Schulz, Aert van der Neer, Doornspijk 2002, p. 194, no. 247, with earlier literature

1903, p. 191, no. 1718; 1934, p. 205, no. 1718; 1976, p. 409, no. A 1948 (as Landscape with Watering Place)

Erlend de Groot, 2022, 'Aert van der Neer, Landscape with an Inn, 1639', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20025811