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Lot Essay
Aert van der Neer is chiefly known for his prolific production of atmospheric moonlit scenes set along canals and estuaries as well as his winter landscapes, around 100 of which survive today. Painted from the mid-1640s on, these works exhibit a novel and wholly individual approach to light. Heavy cloud formations and subtle tonal changes imbue his compositions with a sense of space and atmosphere, which constitutes the artist’s single greatest contribution to the development of Dutch landscape painting in the middle decades of the seventeenth century.
The present canvas, dated by Wolfgang Schulz to around or after 1662 (op. cit., p. 151), occupies an important place in van der Neer’s surviving oeuvre, as it is one of only two identifiable views – and the only recognisable winter landscape – that can be traced today. The other example, dated 1647, depicts the New Amstel River with the Castle Kostverloren in the central background and is today in the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles (fig. 1). In a handful of other pictures, including the Moonlit landscape with castle of 1646 (Israel Museum, Jerusalem), van der Neer incorporated real structures like Kostverloren into an otherwise imaginative landscape.
Van der Neer probably painted at least a few other topographically accurate views, unfortunately lost over the centuries. Two additional winter landscapes, one depicting Haarlem (Schulz, op. cit., no. 109) and another of the Schie near Delft (Schulz, op. cit., no. 138), have been untraced for roughly a century or more. Early sale records are equally littered with references to paintings by van der Neer said to depict cities like Haarlem, Maarssen, Dordrecht and Gorinchem. Intriguingly, another view given to van der Neer of the Montelbaanstoren, though evidently not in wintertime, was offered in Amsterdam on 29 March 1757. Still other paintings – like one depicting a frozen moat outside a city wall in the Museum Bredius, The Hague (inv. no. 079-1946) – have, in the past, been erroneously identified with known sites (Schulz, op. cit., no. 22).
Originally built in 1516 to defend Amsterdam and its harbour on the banks of the Oudeschans in Amsterdam, in 1606 the Montelbaanstoren was remodelled in a late Mannerist style with the addition of an upper part based on designs by Hendrick de Keyser, then the city stonemason and sculptor. Upon its completion, the tower was the second tallest structure in Amsterdam, exceeded only by the Oudekerkstoren (70 metres). Over the next few decades, de Keyser would go on to design a number of structures within the city whose height would eclipse that of the Montelbaanstoren. This includes both the Zuidertoren (1614; 70 metres) and the Westertoren (1631; 87 metres), the latter of which would remain the tallest structure in Amsterdam until 1993. The tower derives its name from a proposal made by Fernando Álvarez de Toledo y Pimentel, 3rd Duke of Alba (1507-1582), to incorporate the structure into a castle – the Monte Albano. It subsequently became known in Dutch as the Monte Albano Toren, which over the years morphed into its current Dutch name.
Van der Neer’s view is taken from the northeast side of the Oudeschans. In the central background, directly to the right of the Montelbaanstoren, rises the tower of the Zuiderkerk. The crispness of winter is eloquently conveyed through painted details like the hoarfrost on the trees lining the canal and billowing smoke rising from chimneys. Various winter activities are seen in the painting’s foreground. At lower left, an opening has been cut in the ice, a man pushes a small sledge before the tower and – most prominently – at least five different groups of men are engaged in playing kolf, a forerunner of golf.
A related drawing of the Montelbaanstoren from the same perspective by van der Neer is found in the ‘Album Amicorum’ of Jacobus Heyblocq (1623-1690), rector of Amsterdam’s gymnasium (fig. 2). Though the majority of the book’s 196 contributions (about 43 of which are drawings) are undated, Schulz suggested van der Neer’s two contributions ‘could have originated in the early sixties,’ approximately the same moment as his painting.
The van der Neer once formed part of the collection of Willem J.R. Dreesmann (1885-1954), eldest son of Anton Dreesmann (1854-1934), the founder of Vroom and Dreesmann – the largest department store business in the Netherlands. Willem served as Chairman of the Board after his father’s death, overseeing the business through years of expansion and modernisation, as well as managing it successfully through the turmoil of the war years. With great wealth at his disposal, Dreesmann formed a large art collection with a focus on Amsterdam – not only topographical paintings such as this, but also drawings, prints, books, clocks, musical instruments, coins, porcelain and other paraphernalia relating to Amsterdam. This was all housed in a large villa dating from 1911 on the Johannes Vermeerstraat, which became the principal Dreesmann residence before the war. The collection remained there, even after the family moved across town to the Diepenbrockstraat in 1939, and Dreesmann decided to open it to the public as a museum in 1950. However, after his death in 1954, the family were less interested in continuing with the museum and, in March 1960, the collection was dispersed in a series of sales at Frederick Muller & Co. The Van der Neer was bought back by the family in that sale and has thus remained a ‘Dreesmann’ picture to this day.
The present canvas, dated by Wolfgang Schulz to around or after 1662 (op. cit., p. 151), occupies an important place in van der Neer’s surviving oeuvre, as it is one of only two identifiable views – and the only recognisable winter landscape – that can be traced today. The other example, dated 1647, depicts the New Amstel River with the Castle Kostverloren in the central background and is today in the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles (fig. 1). In a handful of other pictures, including the Moonlit landscape with castle of 1646 (Israel Museum, Jerusalem), van der Neer incorporated real structures like Kostverloren into an otherwise imaginative landscape.
Van der Neer probably painted at least a few other topographically accurate views, unfortunately lost over the centuries. Two additional winter landscapes, one depicting Haarlem (Schulz, op. cit., no. 109) and another of the Schie near Delft (Schulz, op. cit., no. 138), have been untraced for roughly a century or more. Early sale records are equally littered with references to paintings by van der Neer said to depict cities like Haarlem, Maarssen, Dordrecht and Gorinchem. Intriguingly, another view given to van der Neer of the Montelbaanstoren, though evidently not in wintertime, was offered in Amsterdam on 29 March 1757. Still other paintings – like one depicting a frozen moat outside a city wall in the Museum Bredius, The Hague (inv. no. 079-1946) – have, in the past, been erroneously identified with known sites (Schulz, op. cit., no. 22).
Originally built in 1516 to defend Amsterdam and its harbour on the banks of the Oudeschans in Amsterdam, in 1606 the Montelbaanstoren was remodelled in a late Mannerist style with the addition of an upper part based on designs by Hendrick de Keyser, then the city stonemason and sculptor. Upon its completion, the tower was the second tallest structure in Amsterdam, exceeded only by the Oudekerkstoren (70 metres). Over the next few decades, de Keyser would go on to design a number of structures within the city whose height would eclipse that of the Montelbaanstoren. This includes both the Zuidertoren (1614; 70 metres) and the Westertoren (1631; 87 metres), the latter of which would remain the tallest structure in Amsterdam until 1993. The tower derives its name from a proposal made by Fernando Álvarez de Toledo y Pimentel, 3rd Duke of Alba (1507-1582), to incorporate the structure into a castle – the Monte Albano. It subsequently became known in Dutch as the Monte Albano Toren, which over the years morphed into its current Dutch name.
Van der Neer’s view is taken from the northeast side of the Oudeschans. In the central background, directly to the right of the Montelbaanstoren, rises the tower of the Zuiderkerk. The crispness of winter is eloquently conveyed through painted details like the hoarfrost on the trees lining the canal and billowing smoke rising from chimneys. Various winter activities are seen in the painting’s foreground. At lower left, an opening has been cut in the ice, a man pushes a small sledge before the tower and – most prominently – at least five different groups of men are engaged in playing kolf, a forerunner of golf.
A related drawing of the Montelbaanstoren from the same perspective by van der Neer is found in the ‘Album Amicorum’ of Jacobus Heyblocq (1623-1690), rector of Amsterdam’s gymnasium (fig. 2). Though the majority of the book’s 196 contributions (about 43 of which are drawings) are undated, Schulz suggested van der Neer’s two contributions ‘could have originated in the early sixties,’ approximately the same moment as his painting.
The van der Neer once formed part of the collection of Willem J.R. Dreesmann (1885-1954), eldest son of Anton Dreesmann (1854-1934), the founder of Vroom and Dreesmann – the largest department store business in the Netherlands. Willem served as Chairman of the Board after his father’s death, overseeing the business through years of expansion and modernisation, as well as managing it successfully through the turmoil of the war years. With great wealth at his disposal, Dreesmann formed a large art collection with a focus on Amsterdam – not only topographical paintings such as this, but also drawings, prints, books, clocks, musical instruments, coins, porcelain and other paraphernalia relating to Amsterdam. This was all housed in a large villa dating from 1911 on the Johannes Vermeerstraat, which became the principal Dreesmann residence before the war. The collection remained there, even after the family moved across town to the Diepenbrockstraat in 1939, and Dreesmann decided to open it to the public as a museum in 1950. However, after his death in 1954, the family were less interested in continuing with the museum and, in March 1960, the collection was dispersed in a series of sales at Frederick Muller & Co. The Van der Neer was bought back by the family in that sale and has thus remained a ‘Dreesmann’ picture to this day.