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Dutch school of the 17th century.
Signed with the monogram "AVDN" on a tree trunk, lower right.
Oil on canvas
Presented in a handsome antique blackened wood frame with inverted profile and wavy moldings.
Total dimensions with frame: 78 x 101 cm. The stretcher: 52.5 x 74.5 cm
Aert van der Neer, Dutch painter of the "Golden Century" (Amsterdam 1603/1604 - id. 1677).
Despite his prolific output! We know very little about the life of this landscape painter, who called himself the "Painter of the Night".
He was one of the first artists in the Netherlands to apply an original chiaroscuro to landscapes, with contrasts and colors that contrast the slate-gray of nocturnal scenes with a yellow light ranging from clear to russet. He remains famous for his sensitive, poetic seascapes and moonlit landscapes.
He focused on rendering cloudy skies in silvery tones. He plays with the effects of light. The sun's rays are reflected in the calm expanse of water beside which a few village dwellings seem to be sleeping, and the rhythm of the mills suspended. In his paintings, very often of the same format, the limpid expanse of water and the two-thirds sky leave little room for the strips of land to which houses, boats and trees or bushes cling.
Dutch biographer Arnold Houbraken tells us that he worked as a butler for a Gorinchem family before opening an inn in Amsterdam in 1659, which he had to close in 1662.
His earliest known painting is a genre scene, dated 1632, when he settled in Amsterdam.
He thus devoted himself to painting only late in life, unless he had already been a pupil of Camphuysen c. 1626?
While his early winter views of skaters are inspired by this master and especially by Avercamp, the chronology of his other landscapes is poorly known, and very few of them are dated.
Misunderstood by his contemporaries (as were many other painters), his paintings were unpopular for being off the beaten track;
Posterity did him justice, as his works are now exhibited in the greatest museums:
(Rijksmuseum ; Musée d'Avignon ; Copenhague, S. M. f. K. ; Hambourg, Kunsthalle ; Londres, N. G. ; Musée de Montpellier ; Louvre ; Rotterdam, B. V. B.), his Sunsets (Musée de Kassel ; Mauritshuis ; Ermitage ; Londres, N. G. ; Louvre ; Paris, Petit Palais) and his Sunrises (Mauritshuis). Aert also left winter landscapes reminiscent of Avercamp and G. Van de Velde (Musée d'Amiens; Rijksmuseum; Brunswick, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum; Bruxelles, M. R. B. A.; Mauritshuis; Hermitage; London, N. G.; Munich, Alte Pin.; Vienna, K. M.) and Night Fires (Bruxelles, M. R. B. A.; Copenhagen, S. M. f. K.; Moscow, Pushkin Museum).
Provenance: Berlin Gallery circa 1920, then private collection USA.
Literature:
C. Hofstede de Groot, Catalogue raisonné des œuvres des plus éminents peintres hollandais du XVIIe siècle, vol. VII, 1923.
W. Schulz, Aert van der Neer, 2002
Good condition. Sold with invoice & certificate of appraisal
