EGLON HENDRICK VAN DER NEER | Wooded landscape with two hunters at the entrance to a valley

Acquired for the present collection during the 1970s.

H.-J. Raupp (ed.), Niederländische Malerei des. 17. Jahrhunderts der SØR Rusche-Sammlung, vol. 3, Landschaften und Seestücke, Münster/Hamburg/London 2001, pp. 198-201, cat. no. 50, reproduced in colour (as Attributed to Eglon Hendrik van der Neer);

W. Pijbes, M. Aarts, M. J. Bok et al, At Home in the Golden Age, exh. cat., Zwolle 2008, p. 45, cat. no. 18, reproduced in colour (as Attributed to Eglon Hendrik van der Neer).

Rotterdam, Kunsthal, At Home in the Golden Age, 9 February – 18 May 2008, no. 18 (as Attributed to Eglon Hendrik van der Neer). 

The SØR Rusche Collection has been exhibited extensively over the last two decades. Please click here for further information.

This small wooded landscape by Eglon Hendrick van der Neer may now be recognised as one of the artist's earliest known works. Likely dating to the second half of the 1650s, as also suggested by the costume of the figures in the foreground, it may have been painted when Van der Neer was living in Orange in the South of France, where from 1655-58 he served as court painter to the Dutch governor of the principality. The young artist could have brought the small oak panel support with him from his hometown of Amsterdam, where he trained with his father, the landscape artist Aert van der Neer, as well as the history painter Jacob van Loo. 

In this youthful composition, Van der Neer seems to have drawn inspiration from the Italianate landscapes of other Northern artists of the period, such as Dick Verhaert and Pieter Anthonisz. van Groenewegen. Even at this early stage in his career, he has incorporated a number of characteristic details that he would use throughout his career. In addition to his lively palette and notable attention to detail, Van der Neer has placed a lonely traveller toting a heavy pack in the middle-ground to further highlight the recession of space. A similar traveller appears in his late landscape illustrating Semiramis Receiving the Crown from the Assyrian King Ninus (1694) that is today in a private collection.¹   

1 https://rkd.nl/explore/images/107556