Winter Landscape with Church and Farmhouses

c. 1775

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 41.1 cm × width 53.5 cm × thickness 1.0 cm
outer size: depth 7.0 cm (support incl. frame)

Inscriptions

signature, with monogram, lower left (AV and DN ligated): AV DN

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 1620. The panel could have been ready for use by 1631, but a date in or after 1637 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The single, thin, beige ground extends up to the edges of the support. It consists of small white and some tiny black pigment particles.
Underdrawing Infrared photography revealed an underdrawing in a liquid medium, consisting of several lines generally indicating the scene, and, also visible to the naked eye, on the right, contouring the water.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the edges of the support. A transparent dark brown underpainting was used for the dark areas in the foreground. The snow, ice and sky were blocked in with cool blue and white paints, leaving reserves for most of the figures and architecture, and allowing large areas of the ground to show through, most obviously in the riverbank on the left. Details were inserted next, lending more colour to the figures and the buildings in the background, and the reeds and other vegetation were placed on top of the ice and snow. In the final stage the falling snow was painted, possibly by applying just a small amount of dry white paint with a fairly large brush.
Zeph Benders, 2022

Scientific examination and reports

paint samples: A. Wallert, RMA, no. 113/17, 18 February 2005
paint samples: Z. Benders, RMA, nos. SK-A-3329/1-2, 15 September 2008
technical report: Z. Benders, RMA, 15 September 2008
infrared photography: Z. Benders, RMA, 20 October 2008
dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 8 September 2010

Condition

Fair. The panel cracked in two along the horizontal grain at some point in the past. A canvas strip was glued along the entire length of the crack so as to reinforce the repair. The grain of the wood is visible throughout the paint surface, resulting in a striped pattern which has been retouched (now slightly discoloured), especially in the sky and the background. The varnish has yellowed slightly.

Provenance

…; ? sale, Louis Miéville (Paris), London (Christie’s), 31 March 1922, no. 92 (‘A frozen river scene: Daylight. A town on a river: Winter, with numerous figures on the ice. On Panel, 16 x 21½ [40.6 x 54.6 cm]’), £1,029, to Williams;¹….; ? sale, W. Lockett Agnew, Esq., et al. [anonymous section], London (Christie’s), 15 June 1923, no. 101, £110.5, to S.J. Smith;²…; collection Dominicus Antonius Josephus Kessler (1855-1939) and Mrs A.C.M.H. Kessler-Hülsmann (1868-1947), Kapelle op den Bosch, near Mechelen;³ donated by Mrs A.C.M.H. Kessler-Hülsmann to the museum, with 83 other objects, 1940

Object number: SK-A-3329

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.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

This attractive winter scene bears the signature of Aert van der Neer, but can only be regarded as a pastiche at best. There are all sorts of ‘mistakes’. The Gothic church in the background is a very odd sight in a peasant village, as is the stepped gable on the far right. Buildings of this kind are not found in Van der Neer’s oeuvre but do feature in the earlier Landscape with Bird Trap by Pieter Brueghel II.¹⁰ The present painting seems to have been inspired more by the Brueghel than by Van der Neer, whose kolf players do actually play kolf, a game for two people in which a ball at rest is hit towards a target. Here, though, the figures are skating along, as in ice hockey, which was only introduced as a competitive sport in the late eighteenth century. A final odd feature is that the meteorological conditions at the top of the scene differ from those on the ground. Despite the heavy fall of snowflakes throughout the picture, there is blue sky in several places.

This painting may have come from a French collection, and was auctioned in London in 1922,¹¹ where Hofstede de Groot saw a work that was very similar to the present one: ‘A church in the distance; excessively red clouds. Pollard willows on the land in the foreground.’¹²

It is almost impossible to date this Winter Landscape with Church and Farmhouses. Although the dendrochronology indicates that it could have been best executed in or after 1637, it is probably much later. If the figures are indeed playing a form of ice hockey, it cannot have been made before that sport became popular in the late eighteenth century. The buildings also look anachronistic and give the impression that this is a slightly romanticized pastiche that is more likely to be from the last quarter of the eighteenth or some point in the nineteenth century than from Van der Neer’s time.

Erlend de Groot, 2022

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

W. Schulz, Aert van der Neer, Doornspijk 2002, p. 127, no. 5

Collection catalogues

1946, pp. 17-18, no. 32 (as Aert van der Neer); 1976, p. 410, no. A 3329 (as Aert van der Neer)

Citation

Erlend de Groot, 2022, 'manner of Aert van der Neer, Winter Landscape with Church and Farmhouses, c. 1775', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.4703

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