Aernout van der Neer
Encyclopedia
Dutch Golden Age
The Golden Age was a period in Dutch history, roughly spanning the 17th century, in which Dutch trade, science, military and art were among the most acclaimed in the world. The first half is characterised by the Eighty Years' War till 1648...
, specializing in small night scenes lit only by moonlight and fires, and snowy winter landscapes, both often looking down a canal or river. He was a contemporary of Albert Cuyp and Meindert Hobbema
Meindert Hobbema
Meindert Hobbema , was a landscape painter of the Dutch school.-Life:The facts of his life are somewhat obscure. His chronology and signed pictures substantially contradict each other...
, and like the latter he lived and died in comparative obscurity.
Recent (2008) research by René van Dijk of the Gorinchem Regional Archive has established that Van Der Neer was born in Gorinchem. According to Arnold Houbraken
Arnold Houbraken
Arnold Houbraken was a Dutch painter and writer from Dordrecht, now remembered mainly as a biographer of artists from the Dutch Golden Age. He had ten children. His son Jacobus Houbraken was an engraver of portraits and book illustrations, including books by his father...
, Van Der Neer lived in Gorinchem
Gorinchem
Gorinchem , also called Gorkum , is a city and municipality in the western Netherlands, in the province of South Holland. The municipality covers an area of 21.99 km² of which 3.03 km² is water...
as a steward
Steward (office)
A steward is an official who is appointed by the legal ruling monarch to represent him or her in a country, and may have a mandate to govern it in his or her name; in the latter case, it roughly corresponds with the position of governor or deputy...
to the lords of Arkel
Arkel
Arkel is a village in the Dutch province of South Holland. It is a part of the municipality of Giessenlanden, and lies about 3 km north of Gorinchem.Arkel is a former municipality. In 1986 it became part of Giessenlanden....
, which would account for the absence of any pictures dating from his early years. He became an amateur painter possibly upon contact with the Amsterdam painters Rafael and Jochem Govertsz Camphuysen, whose sister Lysbeth he married in 1629. They had six children: Grietje (1629), Eglon
Eglon van der Neer
Eglon van der Neer , was a Dutch painter of historical scenes, portraits and elegant, fashionable people, and later of landscapes.-Life:...
(~1635), Cornelia (1642), Elisabeth (1645), Pieter (1648), and Alida (1650). Five of the children were baptized in the Nieuwe Kerk
Nieuwe Kerk (Amsterdam)
The Nieuwe Kerk is a 15th-century church in Amsterdam, located on Dam Square, next to the Royal Palace.-History:The bishop of Utrecht gave the city of Amsterdam permission to use a second the parish church in 1408 because the Oude Kerk had grown too small for the growing population of the city....
in Amsterdam, not far from where he lived. His son Eglon later became a portrait painter himself.
Van Der Neer was barely able to support his family by selling his landscapes, which were not highly valued. In 1659 it seemed necessary to supplement his income by keeping a wine tavern in the Kalverstraat
Kalverstraat
The Kalverstraat is the busiest shopping street of Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands. It is named after the kalvermarkt that was held here until the 17th Century....
, but two years later he went broke. He died in Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
in abject poverty, and his art was so little esteemed that the pictures left by him were valued at about five shillings apiece.
The earliest pictures in which Van Der Neer coupled his monogram of A.V. and D.N. interlaced with a date are a winter landscape in the Rijksmuseum
Rijksmuseum
The Rijksmuseum Amsterdam or simply Rijksmuseum is a Dutch national museum in Amsterdam, located on the Museumplein. The museum is dedicated to arts, crafts, and history. It has a large collection of paintings from the Dutch Golden Age and a substantial collection of Asian art...
at Amsterdam (dated 1639), and another in the Martins collection at Kiel
Kiel
Kiel is the capital and most populous city in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, with a population of 238,049 .Kiel is approximately north of Hamburg. Due to its geographic location in the north of Germany, the southeast of the Jutland peninsula, and the southwestern shore of the...
(1642) immature works both, of poor quality. Far better is the Winter Landscape (1643) in Lady Wantage
Wantage
Wantage is a market town and civil parish in the Vale of the White Horse, Oxfordshire, England. The town is on Letcombe Brook, about south-west of Abingdon and a similar distance west of Didcot....
's collection, and the Moonlight Scene (1644) in the d'Arenberg
D'Arenberg (disambiguation)
d'Arenberg may refer to:*Arenberg, For the duchy in Germany and the Princely house of Arenberg *d'Arenberg, an Australian wine company founded in 1912.*Prix d'Arenberg, a group 3 flat horse race in France for two-year-old thoroughbreds...
collection in Brussels.
In 1652 Van Der Neer witnessed the fire which consumed the old town-hall of Amsterdam. He made this accident the subject for two or three pictures, now in the galleries of Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
and Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
. Though Amsterdam appears to have been constantly Van Der Neer's domicile, his pictures tell that he was well acquainted with the canals and woods about Haarlem
Haarlem
Haarlem is a municipality and a city in the Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of North Holland, the northern half of Holland, which at one time was the most powerful of the seven provinces of the Dutch Republic...
and Leiden, and with the reaches of the Maes
Maes
-Surname:* Caroline Maes , Belgian tennis player* Dan Maes , Colorado gubanatorial candidate, 2010* Jef Maes, Belgian composer and violinist* Kristof Maes , Belgian soccer goalkeeper, plays for Germinal Beerschot...
and Rhine. Dordrecht
Dordrecht
Dordrecht , colloquially Dordt, historically in English named Dort, is a city and municipality in the western Netherlands, located in the province of South Holland. It is the fourth largest city of the province, having a population of 118,601 in 2009...
, the home of Albert Cuyp, is sometimes found in his pictures, and substantial evidence exists that there was friendship between the two men. At some period of their lives they laid their hands to the same canvases, on each of which they left their joint mark. On some it was the signature of the name, on others the more convincing signature of style. There are landscapes in the collections of the dukes of Bedford
Bedford
Bedford is the county town of Bedfordshire, in the East of England. It is a large town and the administrative centre for the wider Borough of Bedford. According to the former Bedfordshire County Council's estimates, the town had a population of 79,190 in mid 2005, with 19,720 in the adjacent town...
and Westminster
Duke of Westminster
The title Duke of Westminster was created by Queen Victoria in 1874 and bestowed upon Hugh Grosvenor, 3rd Marquess of Westminster. The current holder of the title is Gerald Grosvenor, 6th Duke of Westminster....
, in which Cuyp has represented either the frozen Maes with fishermen packing herrings, or the moon reflecting its light on the river's placid waters. These are models after which Van Der Neer appears to have worked.
Louvre
The Musée du Louvre – in English, the Louvre Museum or simply the Louvre – is one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement...
, in which Cuyp evidently painted the foreground and cows. In the National Gallery, London
National Gallery, London
The National Gallery is an art museum on Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The gallery is an exempt charity, and a non-departmental public body of the Department for Culture, Media...
picture Cuyp signs his name on the pail of a milkmaid, whose figure and red skirt he has painted with light effectiveness near the edge of Van Der Neer's landscape. Again, a couple of fishermen with a dog, and a sportsman creeping up to surprise some ducks, are Cuyp's in a capital Van Der Neer at the Staedel Institute in Frankfurt
Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...
.
Van Der Neer's favourite subjects were the rivers and watercourses of his native country either at sunset or after dark. His peculiar skill is shown in realizing transparence which allows objects even distant to appear in the darkness with varieties of warm brown and steel greys. Another of his fancies is to paint frozen water, and his daylight icescapes with golfers, sleighers, and fishermen are as numerous as his moonlights. But he always avoids the impression of frostiness, which is one of his great gifts.
His pictures are not scarce. They are less valuable in the market than those of Cuyp or Hobbema; but, possessing a charm peculiarly their own, they are much sought after by collectors. Out of about one hundred and fifty pictures accessible to the public, the choicest selection is in the Hermitage
Hermitage Museum
The State Hermitage is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. One of the largest and oldest museums of the world, it was founded in 1764 by Catherine the Great and has been opened to the public since 1852. Its collections, of which only a small part is on permanent display,...
at Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
. In England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
paintings from his brush are to be found at the National Gallery and Wallace Collection
Wallace Collection
The Wallace Collection is a museum in London, with a world-famous range of fine and decorative arts from the 15th to the 19th centuries with large holdings of French 18th-century paintings, furniture, arms & armour, porcelain and Old Master paintings arranged into 25 galleries.It was established in...
, and, amongst others, in the collections of the Marquess of Bute
Marquess of Bute
Marquess of the County of Bute, shortened in general usage to Marquess of Bute, is a title in the Peerage of Great Britain. It was created in 1796 for John Stuart, 4th Earl of Bute.-Family history:...
and Colonel Holford
Holford
Holford is a village and civil parish in West Somerset within the Quantock Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and about west of Bridgwater and east of Williton. The village has a population of about 200. The village is on the Quantock Greenway and Coleridge Way footpaths...
, and several at Cannon Hall Museum, Park and Gardens (Barnsley, Yorkshire).