River View at Sunrise

c. 1640 - c. 1660

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 15.6 cm × width 28.9 cm
outer size: depth 7 cm (support incl. frame)

Inscriptions

signature, with monogram, bottom right (AV and DN ligated): AV DN

Technical notes

Support The single, horizontally grained oak plank is approx. 0.4 cm thick. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1583. The panel could have been ready for use by 1592, but a date in or after 1602 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 liquid medium, also partly visible to the naked eye, indicating the horizon, the buildings and foliage in the background, the two riverbanks and the figures and boats in both foreground and background.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the edges of the support. A first lay-in of the dark areas in the foreground and the right side of the sky was done in a transparent dark brown paint. The rest of the sky and the water were then blocked in. The use of thin, transparent paints has allowed the light ground to play a role in almost every part of the composition. The reflections in the water were achieved by letting the initial lay-in show through the light blue. Some final details in bright red, yellow and blue were added to the figures and the various buildings. The lightest details, such as the rising sun and the bright yellow reflections on the vegetation, were slightly impasted. Several fingerprints are visible in the trees on the right, creating texture.
Zeph Benders, 2022

Scientific examination and reports

infrared photography: Z. Benders, RMA, 11 September 2008
paint samples: Z. Benders, RMA, nos. SK-A-3330/1-2, 24 September 2008
technical report: Z. Benders, RMA, 24 September 2008
dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 18 February 2010

Condition

Fair. Some predominantly vertical cracks are visible in the sky. Several thick and yellowed spots of old varnish are apparent along the top edge. The varnish has yellowed slightly and shows a few matte areas.

Conservation

conservator unknown: some damaged passages repaired in the sky and near the castle

Provenance

…; the dealers Asscher, Koetser & Welker, London, 1926, c. 1930;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-3330

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

This river view was once considered to be the most attractive work by Aert van der Neer in the former Kessler-Hülsmann collection.⁹ Like the other paintings by the artist there, though, it is not an original,¹⁰ but a copy after a picture resembling a Van der Neer, the authenticity of which has been called into question.¹¹ It is difficult to pass judgement on it, since we no longer know where the latter work is and there is no good colour reproduction. In any event, the subject has little to do with Aert van der Neer, apart from the fairly low position of the sun.

It is not clear when the present copy was made. Dendrochronological examination shows that the panel was most probably ready for use in the early seventeenth century, so it is not inconceivable that it is contemporary with Van der Neer, or roughly so.

Erlend de Groot, 2022

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

W. Schulz, Aert van der Neer, Doornspijk 2002, pp. 195-96, no. 251

Collection catalogues

1976, pp. 410-11, no. A 3330 (as manner of Aert van der Neer)

Citation

Erlend de Groot, 2022, 'copy after Aert van der Neer, River View at Sunrise, c. 1640 - c. 1660', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.4711

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