Landscape with an Inn

1639

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 30.5 cm × width 43.5 cm
outer size: depth 6.5 cm (support incl. frame)

Inscriptions

signature and date, bottom centre: A . v DeR NeeR 1639

Technical notes

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

Scientific examination and reports

paint samples: Z. Benders, RMA, nos. SK-A-1948/1-2, 3 September 2008
technical report: Z. Benders, RMA, 3 September 2008
infrared photography: Z. Benders, RMA, 24 September 2008
dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 21 July 2010

Condition

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.

Conservation

J.A. Hesterman, 1901: overpaint in the sky removed

Provenance

…; 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, 1901¹

Object number: SK-A-1948

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

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

There are several scenes of travellers at a rural watering place in Aert van der Neer’s early landscapes.⁸ 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.⁹

The present painting is very traditional in its composition, being based on early-seventeenth-century models.¹⁰ 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.¹¹ 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,¹² 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,¹³ 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

Literature

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

Collection catalogues

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

Citation

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: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.4706

(accessed 27 December 2024 22:57:40).

Figures

fig. a Infrared photograph of *Landscape with an Inn*