Van der Neer was born in Gorkum in 1603, and died in poverty at Amsterdam in 1677. In his youth he was steward in the family of the Van Arkels, and at this time only occasionally indulged his love of painting. Later he devoted himself to art, but found few purchasers for his pictures and was continually harassed by creditors, and at one time, like Jan Steen, kept a tavern. He is distinguished particularly for his winter and moonlight scenes, the best of which date from about 1646. They exhibit not only a close study of nature but a poetic feeling, which is deep and sincere and often very impressive. He was a painter of moods, expressing the sentiment usually in delicate tonalities, so delicate, indeed, that his pictures, hidden away in the corners of galleries or confronted with more robust pictures, seem at first monotonous and cold. It is not until, as Bode points out, they are isolated in a good light that their merit becomes apparent. This famous expert also compares the method of Van der Neer’s moonlight scenes with that of Rembrandt’s interiors. The latter projects a shaft of light into the hollow gloom, while Van der Neer represents a concavity of light, the luminosity of which is heightened by the shadows. His method, in fact, is the exact reverse of Rembrandt’s.
Two memorable examples of his moonlight scenes appear in the Berlin Gallery, where one is impressively somber, while the other is dramatically stirred by the yellow and red flare and turbid smoke from a burning house, and figures in movement agitate the foreground. Others are in the National Gallery and in the Imperial Art Museum at Vienna. The example in the latter shows a darkened canal, with a boat, stretching back to a town that broods beneath a sky in which the moon rides at full, surrounded by fleecy clouds.
In the Vienna Gallery also is an example of one of his winter scenes, others appearing in the National Gallery and in the Wallace Collection. In these the artist indulges in a freer and livelier use of color, though the animation of the ground and its group of figures does not interfere with the delicate observation and sensitive feeling, that still regulate his treatment of the skies. It is on this that Van der Neer, like all painters of poetic moods, relies chiefly for expression.
In one of Van der Neer’s landscapes in the National Gallery, cattle were painted by Cuyp. The reminder may serve at this point of our story for an introduction to the important part played in Holland landscape by those artists who enlivened it with figures and animals.
LANDSCAPE WITH FIGURES AND ANIMALS
The popularity of this branch of painting in the seventeenth century can be explained by its affinity to genre painting. It is but a step from depicting a party of people in an interior to showing them engaged in some sport or occupation in the open air. The same tendency to depict the incidents of Dutch life, or to use such incidents as the theme of a pictorial presentation, appears in both; and some of the artists of this out-of-door genre, Wouwerman, Adriaen van de Velde, Cuyp, and Berchem, reached proficiency that compares favorably with the masterpieces of interior genre. As for the fondness for depicting cattle, we may recollect how Troyon, after visiting Holland, turned from pure landscape to cattle studies, while every observant visitor to that country has enjoyed the spots of rich color which the grazing herds make in the far stretches of green pasture. They form one of the notable features of the Holland landscape, and it would have been surprising if the painters, so intent on the study of their home surroundings, had overlooked it. The signal member of this group of painters is Paul Potter.
PAUL POTTER
Potter is the prodigy among Dutch artists. At the age of twenty-two he produced a masterpiece that, despite its shortcomings, has compelled the admiration of the world. This is a work of trenchant, even brutal force, while the majority of his work, especially in his later years, wins by its charm of persuasiveness. He is personally known to us through the beautiful portrait by Van der Helst. It was painted in the year of Potter’s death, and shows him a man of distinguished mien, with soft auburn hair curling upon his shoulders, and a face that is marked by a high forehead, heavy-lidded eyes, a strong nose, and full, impulsive lips; a face upon which consumption has set the impress of fell refinement.
