Lot 2056 Dα

Against the background of a park landscape with a fountain, a young lady leans with her left arm on a pedestal, while both hands hold a yellow silk drapery in a graceful gesture. The elegant clothing of precious shimmering fabrics and the rich pearl jewellery indicate the high social position of the lady depicted, whose identity, however, as with most of the artist's portraits, has not yet been established. Although Eglon van der Neer was mainly active in Rotterdam at the time of the painting, which is dated 1671, visits also took him to Amsterdam, The Hague and Leiden, so that the lady facing the viewer with a serious expression could well belong to the patrician class of one of these cities. The elegance of the depiction and the painterly brilliance are reminiscent of the portraiture of Jan Mijtens or Adriaen Hanneman in The Hague, for example.


The son of the important landscape painter Aert van der Neer, Eglon was born in Amsterdam. He was not only active in Rotterdam, but before that in Orange in southern France and later in Brussels. In 1687 he was appointed court painter to the Spanish King Charles II, and eleven years later he received the same title from the Palatine Elector and moved to his court in Düsseldorf, where he died in 1703. In addition to portrait commissions, van der Neer mainly executed elegant genre scenes, religious and mythological paintings, before turning increasingly to landscapes towards the later years of his life.