Landscape In The Moonlight Animated Characters. Aert Van Der Neer (1603-1677)

Moonlit landscape animated characters with a brook crossing the village, a church in the distance Signed with the monogram "AVDN" in the lower center Oil on oak panel: 42 x 63 cm. With frame: 77 x 98 cm Presented in a beautiful old blackened wood frame with inverted profile and wavy moldings. Aert van der Neer, Dutch painter of the "golden age" (Amsterdam 1603/1604 - 1677). This landscape has a career poorly known despite some prolificity. He is one of the first painters in the Netherlands to have applied an original chiaroscuro to the landscape, which is both contrasted and very colorful, where the slate-gray of the nocturnes contrast with a yellow light ranging from light to red. He remained famous for his marines and moonlit landscapes performed with sensitivity and poetry. His oldest painting, a genre scene, dates from 1632, when he settled in Amsterdam. He would thus have devoted himself only tardily to painting, unless he had already been a pupil of Camphuysen v. 1626. If his first winter views are inspired by this master and especially Avercamp, the chronology of his other landscapes is poorly known and very few of them are dated. It is also known that Van der Neer had an inn in Amsterdam, which he had to close in 1662; misunderstood by his contemporaries (like many other painters), his works did not please because leaving the beaten track; Posterity did him justice because his works are now exhibited in the greatest museums: (Rijksmuseum, Avignon Museum, Copenhagen, SM, K., Hamburg, Kunsthalle, London, NG, Museum of Montpellier, Louvre, Rotterdam, BVB ), its Sunsets (Kassel museum, Mauritshuis, Hermitage, London, NG, Louvre, Paris, Petit Palais) and its Sunrise (Mauritshuis). Aert also left Winter Landscapes reminiscent of Avercamp and G. Van de Velde (Amiens Museum, Rijksmuseum, Brunswick, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Brussels, MRBA, Mauritshuis, Ermitage, London, NG, Munich, Alte Pin. Vienna, KM) and Night Fires (Brussels, MRBA, Copenhagen, SM, K., Moscow, Pushkin Museum). Provenance: Etienne Le Roy / Brussels (stamp on the back) Charles Sedelmeyer / Paris (stamp on the back) Martin Rikoff, sale, Paris, December 4, 1907, No. 13 Sale, Stockholm (Bukowski) November 5, 1958, lot 247 Sale, London (Sotheby's) 11 March 1964, lot 77 Sale, London (Christie's), 9 July 1982, lot 56 Literature: C. Hofstede de Groot, Catalog raisonné of the works of the most eminent Dutch painters of the seventeenth century, vol. VII, 1923, p. 421, no. 413 (as autograph) W. Schulz, Aert van der Neer, 2002, p. 410, cat. No.. 1135, as "location unknown" Other notes: In 1923 Cornelis Hofstede de Groot published an article and said that this painting was in the hand of the artist and he had his name printed in capital letters. In 1964, when the painting was auctioned by Sotheby's, it was cataloged by Neil MacLaren (1909-1988), a former curator and curator of 17th century Dutch painting at the National Gallery. In his own copy of Hofstede de Groot's 1923 catalog, he corrected and annotated the entry, notably by writing "restored", without questioning the attribution. Oil on wooden panel formed of a single plank in excellent condition, without slits. The paint layers are finely applied and stable. Under ultraviolet light, there seems to be a strengthening of the composition and the monogram. The general appearance of the painting is very satisfying. The frame is in good condition.