Aert van der Neer

Aert van der Neer , c.1603-77, Dutch landscape painter. Working mostly in Amsterdam, he excelled in painting unusual light effects, such as moonlight, sunsets, conflagrations, and glimmering light on snow and ice. His winter landscapes are among the best in Dutch art. He is well represented in many European galleries. The Metropolitan Museum has his Sunset, The Farrier, and Landscape. His son and pupil, Eglon Hendrik van der Neer, 1634-1703, was a genre, landscape, and portrait painter. He was court painter to the elector palatine in Düsseldorf. He excelled in painting luxurious interiors, hunting scenes, and mythological or biblical subjects in Dutch settings. His Esther and Ahasuerus (Uffizi) is characteristic of his work.

Camphuysen, Govert (b ?Gorinchem, c.1623/4; bur. Amsterdam, 4 July 1672). Dutch painter. He spent most of his career in Amsterdam, but from about 1652 to about 1663 he lived in Stockholm, where he worked for the court. His output included portraits and still-lifes, but he is best known for bucolic landscape and genre scenes in the manner of Aelbert Cuyp and Paulus Potter. Camphuysen's paintings have sometimes been attributed to these better-known masters and his Two Peasants with Cows (Dulwich Picture Gal., London) bears a false Potter signature. His masterpiece is generally reckoned to be A Farm at Sunset (Wallace Coll., London). The brothers Raphael (c.1598–1657) and Jochem Camphuysen (c.1602–59), cousins of Govert and likewise active in Amsterdam, painted moonlight and winter scenes in the style of their friend Aert van der Neer.

Werff, Adriaen van der (1659–1722). Dutch painter of religious and mythological scenes and portraits, active mainly in Rotterdam. He combined the precise finish of the Leiden tradition (learned from his master Eglon van der Neer) with the classical standards of the French Académie Royale and became the most famous Dutch painter of his day, winning international success and earning an enormous fortune. Houbraken, writing in 1718, considered him the greatest of all Dutch painters and this was the prevailing critical opinion throughout the 18th century. His reputation crumbled in the 19th century, when he was thought to have betrayed the Dutch naturalistic tradition, and he is now considered an extremely accomplished but rather sentimental and repetitive minor master. Van der Werff also worked as an architect in Rotterdam, designing elegant house façades. His brother, Pieter van der Werff (1661–1722), was his principal pupil and assistant, imitating his style closely and making many copies of his work.