River View by Moonlight

c. 1850 - c. 1875

Object data

oil on canvas

support: height 70 cm × width 104.3 cm × thickness 4.0 cm (support incl. protective backboard)
outer size: depth 13.5 cm (support incl. frame)

Inscriptions

signature, with monogram, bottom centre (false; AV and D[N] ligated): AV D[N]

Technical notes

Support The plain-weave canvas has been wax-resin lined. All tacking edges have been removed.
Preparatory layers The single, grey ground extends up to the current edges of the support.
Underdrawing A black drawn line around the rooftop of the house on the left, possibly part of an underdrawing, is visible to the naked eye (but not with infrared photography).
Paint layers The paint extends up to the current edges of the support. A first lay-in of the landscape was done in dark green and dark brown. The sky and the water were then added, leaving the two boats closest to the picture plane in reserve. More details were inserted next, such as the foliage and the figures and the sailboats in the background. The reflections of the boats and the riverbanks were applied on top of the water. Rather thick, opaque paints were used, with a fair amount of impasto for the moon and its reflection in the river.
Zeph Benders, 2022

Scientific examination and reports

technical report: C. van Oosterhout / W. de Ridder, RMA, 18 June 1998
infrared photography: Z. Benders, RMA, 23 September 2008
paint samples: Z. Benders, RMA, nos. SK-A-3496/1-2, 24 September 2008
technical report: Z. Benders, RMA, 24 September 2008

Condition

Fair. The original canvas has several small tears which have been repaired and retouched. Large areas in the sky have been retouched and have generally become matte. The varnish has yellowed and saturates poorly, especially in dark areas. The signature has been heavily brushed up.

Provenance

…; collection Dominicus Antonius Josephus Kessler (1855-1939) and Mrs A.C.M.H. Kessler-Hülsmann (1868-1947), Kapelle op den Bosch, near Mechelen;¹ donated by Mrs A.C.M.H. Kessler-Hülsmann, to the museum, with 17 other paintings, 1941, but kept in usufruct;² transferred to the museum, with 17 other paintings, 1947

Object number: SK-A-3496

Credit line: A.C.M.H. Kessler-Hülsmann Bequest, Kapelle op den Bosch

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.³ 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.⁴ Van der Neer’s earliest known work is a ‘guardroom’ of 1632, a genre he rarely practised thereafter.⁵ He started out by producing woodlands,⁶ but in the 1640s shifted his emphasis to views with a setting sun or by moonlight.⁷ He painted his first winter scenes in 1642-43.⁸ 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

In the past this painting was attributed to Aert van der Neer, probably because it is monogrammed ‘AV’. However, there is only a very general, thematic relationship to the work of the seventeenth-century artist, and stylistically it is very far removed indeed. The landscape is a collection of more or less rustic elements: a lake near a village and a farmhouse. A few small sailing vessels are trying to make headway on the smooth water, and a rowing boat with four men in it is approaching the shore. On the far right is a ruin that bears some resemblance to those found in late-eighteenth-century parks like the Valkhof in Nijmegen. It is remarkable how ill-defined the objects are; even a prominent motif like the church is just a large dark undifferentiated mass.

The composition and subject display similarities to the work of Jacobus Theodorus Abels (1803-1866), who was inspired by Van der Neer to specialize in evening landscapes.⁹ One distinctive feature of his oeuvre is the cool, bright patch of sky in the centre of the scene surrounded by heavy, menacing clouds that take up most of the space, as can be seen in his River Landscape by Moonlight.¹⁰ Standing out sharply against the background of a clear sky in that painting is a church tower, and in the dark foreground there are men in a rowing boat on a calm stretch of water. That or a similar picture probably provided the inspiration for the one in the Rijksmuseum, which is too weak to be attributed to Abels himself. It may well be by a contemporary of his and date from the third quarter of the nineteenth century, at a time when the romantic subject of a landscape by moonlight was extremely popular.¹¹

Erlend de Groot, 2022

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

W. Schulz, Aert van der Neer, Doornspijk 2002, p. 196, no. 253

Collection catalogues

1976, p. 411, no. A 3496

Citation

Erlend de Groot, 2022, 'manner of Aert van der Neer, River View by Moonlight, c. 1850 - c. 1875', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.4702

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