Winter Landscape near a Town with Kolf Players

c. 1658 - c. 1660

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 52.2 cm × width 67.2 cm
outer size: depth 9.7 cm (support incl. frame)

Inscriptions

signature, with monogram, lower right (AV and DN ligated): AV DN

Technical notes

Support The panel consists of two horizontally grained oak planks (approx. 24.6-27.3 and 27.3-24.9 cm), approx. 0.7 cm thick. The differences in width account for the strikingly diagonal join. The reverse is bevelled on all sides and has regularly spaced saw marks on the top plank. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1641. The panel could have been ready for use by 1653, but a date in or after 1660 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The double ground extends up to the edges of the support. The first layer is off-white and is followed by a beige ground containing some small white and tiny black pigment particles.
Underdrawing An underdrawing in a liquid medium can be seen with the naked eye and infrared photography, indicating the horizon, the buildings and ships in the background, the two banks and most of the figures.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the edges of the support. A transparent dark brown initial lay-in of the dark areas in the foreground and the buildings was made. The sky, ice and snow were applied in cool blue and white paints, leaving most of the figures and architecture in reserve and large areas of the ground exposed. Details were added in the final stage, giving more colour to the figures. The buildings were then added in the background and the reeds and other vegetation were placed on top of the ice and snow.
Zeph Benders, 2022

Scientific examination and reports

technical report: W. de Ridder / M. van de Laar, RMA, 24 June 1998
infrared photography: RMA, 25 November 2004
paint samples: A. Wallert, RMA, nos. 113/1-3, 25 November 2004
paint samples: A. Wallert, RMA, nos. 113/4-5, 22 December 2004
paint samples: A. Wallert, RMA, nos. 113/7-8, 13 January 2005
paint samples: A. Wallert, RMA, nos. 113/9-10, 21 January 2005
paint samples: A. Wallert, RMA, nos. 113/14-15, 17 February 2005
paint samples: A. Wallert, RMA, no. 113/16 (SEM-EDX and XRD), 18 February 2005
infrared photography: Z. Benders, RMA, 24 September 2008
paint samples: Z. Benders, RMA, nos. SK-A-290/1-2, 24 September 2008
technical report: Z. Benders, RMA, 24 September 2008
dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 8 September 2010

Condition

Fair. At some point the join was reglued.

Conservation

conservator unknown, 1902: repaired
M. Chavannes, 2005: complete restoration

Provenance

…; sale, Maria Trip (1750-1813, Amsterdam), widow of Willem Boreel (1744-1796), Amsterdam (P. van der Schley et al.), 23 September 1814, no. 12, fl. 175, to Jeronimo de Vries, for the museum¹

Object number: SK-A-290

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.² 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.³ Van der Neer’s earliest known work is a ‘guardroom’ of 1632, a genre he rarely practised thereafter.⁴ He started out by producing woodlands,⁵ but in the 1640s shifted his emphasis to views with a setting sun or by moonlight.⁶ He painted his first winter scenes in 1642-43.⁷ 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

The composition of this painting is typical of Aert van der Neer’s winter scenes. There is a strip of land in the foreground, a frozen waterway behind it, a town on the left and countryside on the right. Several pairs are playing kolf, both on the land and on the ice, there are figures with sledges and others are skating in the background. The artist gives the impression that it is a raw winter’s day. Coat tails are flapping in the wind, the kolf players are wearing gloves, and some of the figures have stuffed their hands into their pockets or have huddled up inside their cloaks. That people in spite of the cold are occupied with kolf shows just how popular the game was in the seventeenth century. As in his earlier Winter Landscape near a Town with Kolf Players and Horse-Drawn Sleighs,⁸ the men are taking their activity fairly seriously; it is obviously not an occasion for high spirits or jollity.

Chronologically this work has to be placed after the better-known Winter Landscape near a Town with Kolf Players and Horse-Drawn Sleighs of around 1650-55. This is suggested by the larger scale of the figures and the fact that the design is a little less traditional. Van der Neer had the courage to omit the trees that usually frame his earlier scenes. His only dated picture from after 1653 has a similarly open composition,⁹ but the far coarser manner of that 1662 landscape shows that it was executed later than the one in the Rijksmuseum. The few paintings that are directly comparable include one in Braunschweig that can be assigned to the end of the 1650s, and which has a similar church and colourful sky.¹⁰ Stylistic comparison is complicated by the lack of dated works from this period. The dress of the kolf player in the centre foreground is a better indicator to establish a chronology. He is wearing short petticoat breeches with a fashionably knotted cravat and boothose below the knee. These wide, bell-like tops of the stockings repeat the shape of the breeches. The latter, being the most important part of the costume,¹¹ only caught on in the Dutch Republic around 1658, so it would be safe to place this Winter Landscape near a Town with Kolf Players between circa 1658 and 1660.¹²

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. 477, no. 478; W. Schulz, Aert van der Neer, Doornspijk 2002, p. 126, no. 4

Collection catalogues

1821, p. 53, no. 224; 1843, p. 43, no. 227 (‘The sky has been damaged and is overpainted on the right, the oak is showing through’); 1853, p. 20, no. 199 (fl. 3,000); 1858, p. 100, no. 222; 1880, p. 228, no. 252; 1887, p. 121, no. 1015 (252); 1903, p. 191, no. 1719; 1934, p. 205, no. 1719; 1976, p. 410, no. A 290

Citation

Erlend de Groot, 2022, 'Aert van der Neer, Winter Landscape near a Town with Kolf Players, c. 1658 - c. 1660', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.4704

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