Object data
oil on panel
support: height 55.7 cm × width 102.6 cm
Aert van der Neer
Landscape by Moonlight
c. 1650 - c. 1655
Inscriptions
- signature, with monogram, right of bottom centre (AV and DN ligated): AV DN
Technical notes
Support The panel consists of three horizontally grained oak planks (approx. 8, 27 and 21.5 cm), approx. 1 cm thick. The top, bottom and left edges have been trimmed. The reverse is bevelled on the left, and only a narrow strip has been preserved at the bottom. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest ring was formed in 1634 and that the middle plank includes 28 sapwood rings. The panel could have been ready for use by 1636.
Preparatory layers The single, beige ground extends over the right edge of the support, but not over the top, bottom and left edges.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the edges of the support. A first lay-in was applied with clearly visible brushstrokes of transparent dark brown paint. Both the ground and this undermodelling were left exposed in the final painting, particularly in the foreground. The light blue and grey of the sky and the water were added next, very thinly in some areas, allowing the ground to show through. Lines were scratched in the still wet undermodelling with a sharp implement, exposing the ground. These bright lines were used to add details in the houses on the left, to indicate the lightest leaves of grass in the foreground and to accentuate the contours of some of the figures. Several fingerprints are visible at the top of the sail of the mill in the centre and in the dark area to the right of the three cows in the middle ground. Details were added in both light and dark paints in the final stage, some of which are slightly impasted.
Zeph Benders, 2022
Scientific examination and reports
- paint samples: Z. Benders, RMA, nos. SK-A-3245/1-2, 18 August 2008
- infrared photography: Z. Benders, RMA, 18 August 2008
- technical report: Z. Benders, RMA, 18 August 2008
- dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 18 August 2008
Literature scientific examination and reports
M. Zeldenrust, ‘Aert van der Neers Rivierlandschap bij maanlicht opgehelderd’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 31 (1983), pp. 99-104
Condition
Fair. Two new pieces of wood were inserted at upper right of the reverse, and a dovetail reinforces the upper join. The varnish has yellowed slightly.
Conservation
- M. Zeldenrust, 1981: complete restoration
Provenance
…; ? probate inventory, Jan Six (1618-1700), Lord of Vromade and Wimmenum, and Margareta Tulp (1634-1709), Herengracht, Amsterdam, 6 January 1710, in the art room (‘Een avondtstondt van Aart van der Neer met beelden etc. [fl.] 15’);1 by descent to Jonkheer Jan Six (1857-1926), Lord of Hillegom and Wimmenum, Amsterdam;2 his sale, Amsterdam (F. Muller), 16 October 1928, no. 30, fl. 44,000, to Beels;…; collection Sir Henri W.A. Deterding (1866-1939), London, 1929;3 by whom donated to the museum, with 17 other paintings, 1936
Object number: SK-A-3245
Credit line: Gift of H.W.A. Deterding, London
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Aert van der Neer (Gorinchem 1603/04 - Amsterdam 1677)
Aert van der Neer stated that he was 25 years old when he became betrothed in 1629, so he was probably born in 1603/04, in Gorinchem, the home town of his parents – the baker Igrum Aertsz and his wife Aeltge Jans. His father left for Klundert in Brabant in 1625, where he became a major in Fort Suikerberg. Aert may have followed in his footsteps around then, for Houbraken relates that in his youth he was a ‘major with the lords of Arkel’. That cannot be correct, though, for the famous Van Arkel family had died out in the fifteenth century. Houbraken may have meant that Van der Neer served as a major in the States army and was stationed near Gorinchem, just south of the former Arkel fief. In 1629 he married Lijsbeth Govers of Bergen op Zoom in Amsterdam. He is described as ‘painter’ in the betrothals register, but it is not known if he then remained permanently in the city and earned his living as an artist there. He is only documented in Amsterdam for certain from 1641 on. His eldest sons Eglon and Johannes were born in 1635/36 and around 1637/38. The former developed into a genre, portrait, history and landscape painter and the latter became his father’s assistant and follower. Van der Neer’s circle of friends included the brothers and artists Rafaël and Jochem Camphuysen of Gorinchem, who also moved to Amsterdam in the 1620s. There is a picture of 1633 which is signed by both Jochem Camphuysen and Aert van der Neer, so they were clearly collaborating in that period.4 In 1642 Rafaël Camphuysen was a witness at the baptism of Van der Neer’s daughter Cornelia. The precise nature of their relationship is unclear, though.
In 1659, Van der Neer and his son Johannes are recorded as landlords of the De Graeff inn in Amsterdam’s Kalverstraat, and in 1659 as vintners. It is believed that Aert van der Neer could not make ends meet as an artist alone and had to find other sources of income. In 1662 he was unable to pay his debts and the Chamber of Bankruptcy made an inventory of his possessions. Oddly enough it did not list any painter’s requisites, nor any works that were definitely made by him. Almost nothing is known about the last 15 years of his life, but he was probably very poor. On his death in 1677 the arrears of rent for the rooms he lived in had mounted up to 15 months. He was buried in Amsterdam’s Leidsche Kerkhof, the last resting place of many paupers. His children Eglon, Pieter and Cornelia refused to accept their inheritance for fear of being saddled with his debts.
There are around 400 paintings attributed to Van der Neer, more than 30 of which are signed and dated, most of them in the 1640s. Only one picture after 1653 bears the year of execution.5 Van der Neer’s earliest known work is a ‘guardroom’ of 1632, a genre he rarely practised thereafter.6 He started out by producing woodlands,7 but in the 1640s shifted his emphasis to views with a setting sun or by moonlight.8 He painted his first winter scenes in 1642-43.9 Possibly inspired by the fire that destroyed Amsterdam’s Old Town Hall in July 1652, his late career is dominated by pictures of towns with burning buildings.
Erlend de Groot, 2022
References
A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, III, Amsterdam 1721, p. 172; A.D. de Vries, ‘Biografische aanteekeningen betreffende voornamelijk Amsterdamsche schilders, plaatsnijders, enz. en hunne verwanten’, Oud Holland 3 (1885), pp. 55-80, 135-60, 223-40, 303-12, esp. p. 234; A. Bredius, ‘Aernout (Aert) van der Neer’, Oud Holland 18 (1900), pp. 69-82; A. Bredius, ‘Nog iets over Aernout (Aert) van der Neer’, Oud Holland 28 (1910), pp. 56-57; C. Hofstede de Groot, Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, VII, Esslingen/Paris 1918, pp. 359-523; A. Bredius, ‘Waar is Aernout van der Neer begraven?’, Oud Holland 39 (1921), p. 114; Bredius in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XXV, Leipzig 1931, pp. 374-75; F. Bachmann, ‘Die Brüder Rafel und Jochem Camphuysen und ihr Verhältnis zu Aert van der Neer’, Oud Holland 85 (1970), pp. 243-50, esp. p. 249; F. Bachmann, Aert van der Neer 1603/4-1677, Bremen 1982; Y. Prins, ‘Een familie van kunstenaars en belastingpachters: De kunstschilders Aert en Eglon van der Neer en hun verwanten’, Jaarboek van het Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie 54 (2000), pp. 189-253; W. Schulz, Aert van der Neer, Doornspijk 2002; R. van Dijk, Nieuwsbrief Stichting Gouden Eeuw Gorinchem, no. 3 (Spring 2009); R. van Dijk, Nieuwsbrief Stichting Gouden Eeuw Gorinchem, no. 7 (Winter 2010-Spring 2011); Van der Molen in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, XCII, Munich/Leipzig 2016, p. 106
Entry
This superbly painted moonlit scene is generally regarded as one of Aert van der Neer’s masterpieces. However, this is probably not how it left his studio. It seems to have been trimmed considerably, above all at the top, and as a result the horizon is far higher than is usual with the artist. It is impossible to say by how much the panel has been reduced, but in most of Van der Neer’s works from this period the ratio of sky to land is around 70:30, and if we assume that this one did not deviate from that it has been reduced by approximately one-third, with the sawn-off strip measuring circa 27.5 cm in height.
Rarely was the hushed Dutch landscape rendered so convincingly as evening fell. The warm foreground with houses and sandy paths lit by the moon stands out sharply against the cool blue sky. The transition between warm and cool is effected by the grey water, onto which small sailing vessels and windmills cast yellow-brown shadows. The scene looks as if it was depicted from life, but the fall of light defies the laws of nature in many places, for the houses are lit from the side, the cartwheels from in front and the silhouettes from behind. Even more striking than the chiaroscuro and the use of colour is the virtuoso execution, which is most apparent in the details.10 The artist scratched lines into the wet paint in various places with a sharp object, probably the handle of his brush. This brought the beige ground to the surface, creating brightly illuminated passages. One consequence of this scratching technique is that the scene looks very draughtsman-like. Elsewhere one can see Van der Neer using his fingers. For instance, he shortened the sail of the windmill in the centre a little by rubbing out the dark areas in the wet paint with his thumb. These features and the fact that the ground plays such an important part in the design create the impression that the picture was executed very swiftly.
Aert van der Neer’s nocturnes with stretches of water are often linked to the surroundings of Amsterdam. This is supposedly the river Amstel, with one of the villages to the south of the city. However, he rarely if ever depicted recognizable topographical features.11 His compositions often follow a standard pattern of a strip of land in the foreground, a row of houses, a town or village on the left, some buildings in the countryside on the right, and a broad stretch of water in the middle. The church in the background of this Landscape by Moonlight is far removed from the settlement, which is highly unrealistic. Although some elements, such as the houses on the left, may have been made from life, the painting as a whole is not a record of a specific place but a generalized picture of the Dutch landscape containing elements that the artist repeated time and again, such as windmills and sailing ships. He also had a keen eye for rustic motifs. In this particular work we see figures carrying out their last tasks for the day. It has already finished for the peasant on the far left: he is seated on a bench in front of his house, looking out over the path where several others have hitched horses to their carts and are just leaving. The fishermen out on the water are hauling in their lines, and in the boat of one of them there is an eel basket – an object that recurs remarkable often in Van der Neer’s oeuvre. There is another one sunk in the water in the centre of the scene.
Landscape by Moonlight is generally regarded as an early Van der Neer from the mid-1640s.12 However, apart from the daring execution and the unusual format, which as we have seen is due to trimming, there are no hard-and-fast indications that it is from his initial career. On the contrary, it is closely related to a panel that is signed and dated 1653, the present whereabouts of which are unknown (fig. a). Schulz considered the inscribed year as unreliable, but it seems that that was largely because he wanted to regard that picture as an early moonlit piece (and thus the one in the Rijksmuseum as well).13 Its horizon is, as usual, approximately one-third of the way up the painted surface. Apart from that, both works resemble each other closely in composition and details. If it is assumed that the signature and date of the variant are genuine, then it is only logical to place Landscape by Moonlight in the early 1650s as well.
Erlend de Groot, 2022
See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements
Literature
C. Hofstede de Groot, Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, VII, Esslingen/Paris 1918, p. 401, no. 155; F. Bachmann, Aert van der Neer 1603/4-1677, Bremen 1982, p. 103; M. Zeldenrust, ‘Aert van der Neers Rivierlandschap bij maanlicht opgehelderd’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 31 (1983), pp. 99-104; W. Schulz, Aert van der Neer, Doornspijk 2002, p. 195, no. 250, with earlier literature
Collection catalogues
1960, p. 224, no. 1720 A2; 1976, p. 410, no. A 3245
Citation
Erlend de Groot, 2022, 'Aert van der Neer, Landscape by Moonlight, c. 1650 - c. 1655', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.4707
(accessed 28 April 2024 01:52:39).