Object data
oil on panel
support: height 37 cm × width 58.7 cm × thickness 1.1 cm
outer size: depth 6 cm (support incl. frame)
Aert van der Neer
Wooded Landscape with Hunter/Winter Landscape
c. 1642 - 1643
Inscriptions
- signature, with monogram, lower right (AV and DN ligated): AV DN
Technical notes
Support The single, horizontally grained oak plank is approx. 0.6 cm thick. The top edge has probably been trimmed. The reverse is bevelled on all sides, although only slightly at the top, and has regularly spaced saw marks. A wooden strip (approx. 6.3 cm) was added to the top at a later date and was at some point detached again, leaving half dovetails near the upper corners. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1642. The panel could have been ready for use by 1651, but a date in or after 1661 is more likely.
Preparatory layers Due to the poor condition of the painting it is difficult to assess the build-up of the preparatory layers. The ground appears to extend up to the edges of the support and to consist of two layers: the first being white to off-white and primarily filling the grain of the wood, the second being beige. The ground seems identical to the one found on SK-A-290 and SK-A-3329.
Underdrawing Infrared reflectography revealed a loose underdrawing in a liquid medium (also partly visible with infrared photography) consisting of several broad, dark forms roughly indicating compositional elements. The flat shapes of the figures, executed in black paint with no added shading or detailing, are likely to have been applied in this stage.
Paint layers Due to extensive compositional changes and the poor condition it is difficult to assess the build-up of the painting. The paint appears to extend up to the edges of the support. The sky and ice were blocked in first with grey, followed by the landscape. More details and impasto were gradually added next. Numerous changes were made at various stages. Infrared images clearly reveal that the trees, for example, were first planned as having no leaves, and that the configuration of buildings to the right of the church tower was altered (also faintly visible to the naked eye). Moreover, it seems that an initial winter view was converted into a hunting scene quite early on; the flat shapes of the figures originally planned on the ice appear to have been left at a preliminary stage.
Lisette Vos, 2022
Scientific examination and reports
- X-radiography: RMA, nos. 1534-35, 1978
- paint samples: Z. Benders, RMA, nos. SK-C-192/1-2, 3 September 2008
- technical report: Z. Benders, RMA, 3 September 2008
- infrared photography: Z. Benders, RMA, 24 September 2008
- infrared reflectography: L. Vos, RMA, 16 March 2010
- technical report: L. Vos, RMA, 7 April 2010
- dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 17 November 2010
Condition
Poor. It appears that the composition of Landscape with Hunter was once partially removed to reveal the underlying, probably unfinished Winter Landscape, after which the picture was overpainted to close it again. That intervention, in turn, was partially undone during the 1988-92 treatment, making the underlying winter scene more apparent and revealing the damaged bare wood of the plank on the left.
Conservation
- M. Bijl, 1988 - 1992: overpaint partially removed
- L. Kuiper, 1988 - 1992: overpaint partially removed
Provenance
…; from the dealer John Smith, London, £100, to Adriaan van der Hoop (1778-1854), Amsterdam, 2 July 1833;1 by whom bequeathed to the City of Amsterdam, with 223 other paintings, 1854;2 from which on loan to the museum since 30 June 18853
Object number: SK-C-192
Credit line: On loan from the City of Amsterdam (A. van der Hoop Bequest)
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
Since the nineteenth century this Wooded Landscape with Hunter has been rated as one of the most important early paintings by Aert van der Neer.10 The scene, as it appeared at the time, was of a wood and a pond with a view through the trees to a church, and with a hunter in the foreground (fig. a). Bachmann dated it around 1642,11 and compared it to Pond in Front of a Village, which was thought to come from the same year but which is now known to have been executed after 1645.12 That was also one of the few of the artist’s compositions to include a hunter.13 The problematic aspects of the present picture, such as the clumsy rendering of the hunter, the lack of a target for him and the overpainting in the sky and trees on the left, were not immediately noticed and the autograph nature of the work was never doubted, nor did the strip 6.3 cm high that had clearly been added to the top of the panel raise questions.14
It is no longer possible to reconstruct precisely how, why and when reservations began to be expressed about large areas of the work.15 As the 1976 collection catalogue shows the painting without the extension at the top, the extra strip had probably been detached by then.16 It had certainly been removed by 1978, when X-rays were taken.17 In 1988-92 part of the overpainting of the sky and the trees on the left, which originally extended onto the added strip, was removed. Photographs taken at the time show that the pond had now become transparent to such an extent that the silhouettes of small figures underneath it must have been visible to the naked eye (fig. b). The cleaning had several consequences. On the one hand it became clear that most of the left-hand part of the picture did not match Van der Neer’s initial design. The tree in the foreground was previously shorter and another on the left much taller, they had no leaves, and silhouettes of skaters rather than the hunter were included. On the other hand, the wood of the panel was now revealed. In other words, a winter landscape had been discovered, but there was so little of it left that it could not possibly serve as the basis for a new scene. An attempt was made to reverse the cleaning but was eventually abandoned.
The one thing that is certain is that the panel was originally used for a winter landscape. The left half of the composition consisted of a stretch of frozen water surrounded by a strip of land, woods and the houses of a village. A simple church could be seen between the bare trunks of the trees in the left background. On the ice were skaters, some of them with sledges, and a few people playing kolf. The scale of the figures and their activities closely resemble those in other winter landscape by Van der Neer from the period 1642-43.18 It is very possible that the church between the trees on the right was part of the initial design,19 as quite a few changes were made to it. The trees on the right, or at least some of them, certainly were originally planned. It seems likely that Van der Neer left the picture unfinished and decided at an early stage to use the panel for another scene.
Regardless of the fact whether Van der Neer himself had a hand in the compositional adaptations or another artist, the initial design was changed before 1833, when Adriaen van der Hoop bought the picture as a ‘Landscape by A. van der Neer’.20 The sheet of frozen water became a pond in a wood, the skaters were overpainted, the trees had sprouted leaves, and the buildings around the ice were covered with trees. Only the small house in the centre of the scene was spared, although it was tucked away a bit by making the stump of the dead tree in the foreground taller.
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, pp. 367-68, no. 19; F. Bachmann, Aert van der Neer 1603/4-1677, Bremen 1982, pp. 39-40; W. Schulz, Aert van der Neer, Doornspijk 2002, pp. 194-95, no. 248
Collection catalogues
1887, p. 121, no. 1017; 1903, p. 191, no. 1721; 1934, p. 206, no. 1721; 1960, p. 224, no. 1721; 1976, p. 410, no. C 192
Citation
Erlend de Groot, 2022, 'Aert van der Neer, Wooded Landscape with Hunter/Winter Landscape, c. 1642 - 1643', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.10660
(accessed 21 September 2024 11:39:14).