Winter Landscape near a Town with Kolf Players and Horse-Drawn Sleighs

c. 1650 - c. 1655

Object data

oil on canvas

support: height 63.2 cm × width 77.7 cm
outer size: depth 8.7 cm (support incl. frame)

Inscriptions

signature, with monogram, lower left, on the tree trunk (AV and DN ligated): AV DN

Technical notes

Support The plain-weave canvas has been lined. All tacking edges have been removed. Slight cusping is visible at the bottom.
Preparatory layers The single, off-white ground extends up to the current edges of the support. It consists of some small black and dark brown pigment particles.
Underdrawing Infrared photography revealed an underdrawing in a liquid medium, also partly visible to the naked eye, most clearly so at the far left edge. The underdrawing was not precisely followed in the final painting; for instance, the kolf stick held by the man left of centre in the foreground originally rested on his shoulder.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the current edges of the support. A transparent dark brown first lay-in of the dark areas in the foreground was made. The snow, ice and sky were applied in cool blue and white paints, with reserves for most of the figures and much of the architecture, often leaving the ground exposed around the contours. Details in both light and dark paints were inserted in the final stage, some of them slightly impasted to give more colour to the figures and the buildings in the background. The reeds and other vegetation protruding from the ice and snow were also added then. A fingerprint on the end of one of the logs lying in the foreground was added to mimic the structure of the wood. There are a few pentimenti where the positions of the figures and animals have been altered, for example the head of the horse pulling the sleigh on the left.
Zeph Benders, 2022

Scientific examination and reports

infrared photography: RMA, 27 January 2005
infrared photography: Z. Benders, RMA, 12 September 2008
paint samples: Z. Benders, RMA, nos. SK-C-191/1-2, 12 September 2008
technical report: Z. Benders, RMA, 12 September 2008

Condition

Fair. The paint surface is slightly abraded, especially in the more thinly applied darker areas. Remains of an older, yellowed varnish are present in the interstices of the paint layer. The varnish is uneven and has yellowed slightly.

Conservation

conservator unknown, 1946: cleaned

Provenance

…; collection Edward Gray (?-1838), Harringhay Park, Hornsey;¹…; from the dealer Albertus Brondgeest, Amsterdam, fl. 2,800, to Adriaan van der Hoop (1778-1854), Amsterdam, July 1839;² by whom bequeathed to the City of Amsterdam, with 223 other paintings, 1854;³ on loan from the City of Amsterdam to the museum since 30 June 1885⁴

Object number: SK-C-191

Credit line: On loan from the City of Amsterdam (A. van der Hoop Bequest)

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.⁵ 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.⁶ Van der Neer’s earliest known work is a ‘guardroom’ of 1632, a genre he rarely practised thereafter.⁷ He started out by producing woodlands,⁸ but in the 1640s shifted his emphasis to views with a setting sun or by moonlight.⁹ He painted his first winter scenes in 1642-43.¹⁰ 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 ambitious winter scene is regarded as one of Aert van der Neer’s most distinctive and successful paintings in the genre.¹¹ Numerous figures are entertaining themselves with all sorts of amusements on a broad frozen stretch of water outside a town. The direction of view is diagonally into the distance from the left foreground to the right background, and is accentuated by the simple sleigh with peasants on the left, and by the spiked pole resting on the eel basket.¹² The latter object has an iconographic counterpart in the fisherman on the right who is spearing eels through a hole in the ice under the gaze of some bystanders. Next to this group several people are playing kolf.¹³ The man left of centre is waiting until a skater gets out of the way before hitting the ball. There are more kolf players and skaters in the middle ground. One has a hook on his back so that he can pull himself out if he falls through the ice. A de luxe horse-drawn sleigh preceded by a dog is heading for a side arm of the frozen water on the right. As in other compositions by Van der Neer there is a town with several church spires on the left, and a stretch of countryside with a windmill and scattered farmhouses on the right.

Compared to contemporaries like Jan van de Cappelle and Salomon van Ruysdael, Van der Neer does not present an intimate, small-scale picture of diversions on the ice but follows the more traditional route with compositions in which the viewer gazes over a large sheet of frozen water populated with relatively small figures engaged in a wide range of activities.¹⁴ Van der Neer’s work is therefore likened to that of his great predecessor Hendrick Avercamp.¹⁵ In this painting, though, there are none of the latter’s typically humorous narrative details, like skaters who have fallen flat on their faces or through the ice. Van der Neer focused less on detail and more on the scene as a whole, to which he gave a strong unity of tone with a restrained, subtle application of colour. The figures and objects in the foreground are brightly lit and stand out sharply against the middle and backgrounds, where a hazy, wintry sun is just breaking through the clouds. The further off they are the more the town and icy surface dissolve in a warm glow. The great attention paid to the cloudy sky, the clearly framed composition and the use of aerial perspective are typical of Van der Neer’s oeuvre. Other distinctive characteristics are the strikingly draughtsman-like handling of the figures and objects, and the lines scratched into the wet paint with the handle of the brush or a similar implement, as in the blanket on the horse on the right and in the straw on the peasants’ sleigh.

Van der Neer’s winter scenes are never of recognizable locations, and this one, too, is very clearly imaginary. One of the devices that he invariably used was a strip of land in the foreground, and although it does contribute to the unity and balance of the composition it does imply that the stretch of ice is always bounded on three sides by town, countryside and reed fringes, meaning that the water was not a free-flowing stream, nor a canal running along the city walls.

Winter Landscape near a Town with Kolf Players and Horse-Drawn Sleighs is generally placed around 1655.¹⁶ Although it is considerably more complex and ambitious than Van der Neer’s earliest dated winter scenes, which are from the 1640s, the assignment to the mid-1650s seems to have been dictated largely by the unproven hypothesis that that was his most successful and productive period. However, the composition, which is still fairly traditional, consisting as it does of a general view with smallish figures, would seem to point to a relatively early origin, and that also applies to the framing device of a small group of tall bare trees on the right. The detailing, though, betrays the hand of a mature artist. A date in the early 1650s could be proposed on the evidence of the dress of the foreground group of kolf players. The broad collars draped over the shoulders of the three elegantly clad gentlemen came into fashion around then.¹⁷ The long, wavy hair and the breeches with long open legs are also typical of that time,¹⁸ so it seems plausible that Van der Neer painted the scene between 1650 and 1655.

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. 477, no. 479; W. Stechow, Dutch Landscape Painting of the Seventeenth Century, London 1966, pp. 93-94; F. Bachmann, Aert van der Neer 1603/4-1677, Bremen 1982, pp. 98, 117-18; De Bruyn Kops in P.C. Sutton et al., Masters of 17th-Century Dutch Landscape Painting, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Boston (Museum of Fine Arts)/Philadelphia (Philadelphia Museum of Art) 1987-88, pp. 384-85; W. Schulz, Aert van der Neer, Doornspijk 2002, p. 125, no. 3, with earlier literature

Collection catalogues

1887, p. 121, no. 1016; 1903, p. 191, no. 1720; 1934, p. 205, no. 1720; 1960, p. 224, no. 1720; 1976, p. 410, no. C 191

Citation

Erlend de Groot, 2022, 'Aert van der Neer, Winter Landscape near a Town with Kolf Players and Horse-Drawn Sleighs, c. 1650 - c. 1655', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.4708

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