The depiction of night in Dutch art shifts from an expression of the uncanny to precise observation of nature with symbolic depth. Aert van der Neer gives this genre a new character by creating atmospheric landscapes that anticipate romantic ideas.
Night scenes
Nightfall sets natural limits to human activity and at the same time points to domains which have always been associated with the sinister and dangerous. Scenes bathed in darkness showing storms at sea or fires become firmly established in Dutch paintings of the 16th and 17th centuries, with the repeatedly depicted fall of Troy especially around 1600 occupying a special position.
From the point of view of the times, however, night can also be of a peaceful nature and express a future which will bring salvation, as evidenced above all in the depictions of the birth of Christ as an expression of a turning point in time. In the 17th century, however, a precise observation of nature and the weather came to the fore which was detached from biblical motifs. It was in keeping with Dutch art and its propensity for accurate reproduction. Although the waterlogged flat landscape in the twilight is reminiscent of the end of life, it also radiates a feeling of security and tranquillity. It stands as an example both of the lifeworld of the Dutch people and of their religiously strengthened awareness: after all, they had successfully resisted the dangers of the sea through their technical inventiveness and recreated their own country through land reclamation.
Like no other artist of his time, the Amsterdam-based Aert van der Neer lent a distinctive character to the genre of nocturnal paintings. In doing so, he was able to draw on motifs from the immediate vicinity of his hometown – just like Rembrandt in his etchings. The mood of this anticipates in many ways the approach towards landscape painting during the period of Romanticism.
Text: Ulrich Becker