Landscape by Moonlight

c. 1640 - c. 1650

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 31 cm × width 43 cm
outer size: depth 8 cm (support incl. frame)

Inscriptions

signature, with monogram, bottom centre (AV ligated): AV N

Technical notes

Support The single, horizontally grained oak plank is approx. 1 cm thick. The reverse is bevelled on all sides and has regularly spaced saw marks. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1611. The panel could have been ready for use by 1622, but a date in or after 1628 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The double ground extends up to the edges of the support. The first, off-white layer is followed by a thin, beige-coloured ground containing fine white and some very small black and reddish-brown pigment particles.
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 of the landscape was executed with a transparent dark brown wash. The houses and figures were then indicated in dark brown and black paints, and the sky and the water were subsequently blocked in. Details, such as the grass and the trees, were inserted in the final stage, some of which were applied over the sky; the moon and its reflection in the water were also added then, using a thick, almost white paint. A few changes are visible to the naked eye (and even more clearly with infrared photography): on the far left, just above the horizon, there are the outlines of a building; an elongated vertical shape between the mill and the cows indicates that another architectural element was planned here.
Zeph Benders, 2022

Scientific examination and reports

technical report: M. van de Laar / W. de Ridder, RMA, 22 June 1998
infrared photography: Z. Benders, RMA, 12 September 2008
technical report: Z. Benders, RMA, 12 September 2008
paint samples: Z. Benders, RMA, nos. SK-A-2128/1-2, 15 September 2008
dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 19 December 2008

Condition

Fair. The plank split in two, was glued and reinforced with three small wooden blocks. There is some old woodworm damage along the bottom edge as seen from the reverse. The varnish has yellowed and displays a milky white haze, especially in the darker areas.

Provenance

… ; ? sale, Baron E. de Beurnonville, Paris (P. Chevallier), 23 March 1883, no. 37 (‘Neer (Genre de vander), Vue de Hollande. Effet de clair de lune’), fr. 219, to De Lestang;…; from the dealer Lampe, Brussels, fl. 2,450, to the museum, 1904

Object number: SK-A-2128

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.¹ 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.² Van der Neer’s earliest known work is a ‘guardroom’ of 1632, a genre he rarely practised thereafter.³ He started out by producing woodlands,⁴ but in the 1640s shifted his emphasis to views with a setting sun or by moonlight.⁵ He painted his first winter scenes in 1642-43.⁶ 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 small panel is probably one of the earliest moonlit landscapes by Aert van der Neer. The scene is very difficult to read compared to the large Landscape by Moonlight from around 1650-55.⁷ If one peers at the dark picture long enough one can gradually make out houses, objects and animals. Van der Neer was particularly subtle in the foreground. On the left, for example, is the attractive silhouette of a couple of reddish-brown cows which are hard to separate from their surroundings. In the centre are the slightly clearer shapes of another pair at the waterside. The most well-defined object is the gnarled dead branch below, the edges of which are picked out by the moonlight. Van der Neer’s distinctive manner can be glimpsed here and there. For example, he brought out the lighter underlayer by the reeds in the foreground by scratching in the wet paint. However, the handling of the surface is less subtle a little further back. The moon’s reflection in the water is executed with impasto but is not convincing, and the village to the right is difficult to decipher.

According to Bachmann, Van der Neer’s first evening landscapes are recognizable by their darkness.⁸ It was only in the 1650s that he succeeded in having the objects in his evening and nocturnal scenes convincingly illuminated. The composition and style of the Rijksmuseum picture are comparable to those of a few works that are also regarded as being early moonlit paintings. One in Worms, which is admittedly twice as large, has the same structure of a tree trunk and fringe of reeds in the foreground, with the silhouettes of two pairs of cows beyond.⁹ Another in Frankfurt has similar unnaturally bright clouds on the left, making this part of the composition look as if it is illuminated by broad daylight. ¹⁰ These three paintings give the impression that the artist was still searching for a convincing way of depicting a nocturnal scene. They are thus probably datable in the 1640s.

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. 400, no. 152; W. Schulz, Aert van der Neer, Doornspijk 2002, p. 195, no. 249

Collection catalogues

1934, p. 206, no. 1721a; 1976, p. 410, no. A 2128

Citation

Erlend de Groot, 2022, 'Aert van der Neer, Landscape by Moonlight, c. 1640 - c. 1650', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.4705

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