River View by Moonlight

in or after c. 1653

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 41.9 cm × width 57.5 cm
outer size: depth 7 cm (support incl. frame)

Technical notes

Support The single, horizontally grained oak plank is approx. 1 cm thick. The reverse is bevelled on all sides. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1634. The panel could have been ready for use by 1643, but a date in or after 1653 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The single, thin, 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 several lines indicating the group of houses on the right and far left.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the edges of the support. The initial lay-in, executed with transparent dark brown paint, has remained visible in the houses on the far right and in large areas of both riverbanks. The first layers for the sky and water were then blocked in. Most elements were left in reserve in the background, with a few exceptions, such as the paling in the right foreground. A semi-transparent greyish layer, allowing the first lay-in to show through, was used to indicate the riverbanks. Details in both light and dark paints were inserted in the final stage, some of them slightly impasted, such as the campfire, the moon and the lightest passages in the clouds on the left.
Zeph Benders, 2022

Scientific examination and reports

technical report: W. de Ridder / M. van de Laar, RMA, 24 June 1998
infrared photography: Z. Benders, RMA, 7 August 2008
paint samples: Z. Benders, RMA, nos. SK-A-3328/1-2, 28 August 2008
technical report: Z. Benders, RMA, 28 August 2008
dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 23 July 2010

Condition

Fair. Three old horizontal cracks (the upper two reinforced with dovetails) running across the entire width are visible in the paint surface. There is some old woodworm damage in the lower left corner as seen from the reverse. The paint surface of the thinly applied parts, such as the houses on the right, is abraded. The varnish has yellowed slightly.

Provenance

…; ? sale, Rupert Mason et al. [anonymous section], London (Christie’s), 20 July 1931, no. 137 (‘A river scene, with boats and figures; Moonlight. On panel, 16½ in by 22½ in [42 x 57cm]’), £ 3 3s, to ‘Boere’;¹…; collection Dominicus Antonius Josephus Kessler (1855-1939) and Mrs A.C.M.H. Kessler-Hülsmann (1868-1947), Kapelle op den Bosch, near Mechelen;² donated by Mrs A.C.M.H. Kessler-Hülsmann to the museum, with 83 other objects, 1940

Object number: SK-A-3328

Credit line: Gift of Mr and Mrs Kessler-Hülsmann, 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

The left half of this scene is a very mediocre and simplified version of a landscape by Aert van der Neer that is now in Avignon.⁹ The row of houses and figures around the campfire were borrowed from that picture, whereas smaller details, such as a coach and several signboards, were omitted. It is not clear whether the artist worked from the original or from a drawing that is now in the British Museum in London.¹⁰ The sheet is a detailed repetition of the painting but is not accepted as an authentic Van der Neer by Schulz.¹¹ One striking feature of the present composition is the contrast in execution between the smoothly applied dark passages and the light of the rising moon (or setting sun, perhaps), which is coarse and impasted. The right half of the scene, with the river and the town in the background, could have been inspired by another landscape of Van der Neer’s, but that model is no longer known.

It is not clear where or when this version was made. Schulz thought that it was from the eighteenth or nineteenth century, but an earlier date cannot be ruled out, since the dendrochronology indicates that the panel was most probably ready for use in or after 1653.

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. 252

Collection catalogues

1976, p. 411, no. A 3328 (as manner of Aert van der Neer)

Citation

Erlend de Groot, 2022, 'copy after Aert van der Neer, River View by Moonlight, in or after c. 1653', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.4710

(accessed 23 September 2024 13:24:53).