Dort in the landscape sunset of the Louvre, in which Cuyp evidently painted the foreground and cows. In the National Gallery picture Cuyp signs his name on the pail of a milkmaid, whose figure and red skirt he has painted with light effectiveness near the edge of van der Neer’s landscape. Again, a couple of fishermen with a dog, and a sportsman creeping up to surprise some ducks, are Cuyp’s in a capital van der Neer at the Staedel Institute in Frankfort.
Van der Neer’s favourite subjects were the rivers and watercourses of his native country either at sunset or after dark. His peculiar skill is shown in realizing transparence which allows objects—even distant—to appear in the darkness with varieties of warm brown and steel greys. Another of his fancies is to paint frozen water, and his daylight icescapes with golfers, sleighers, and fishermen are as numerous as his moonlights. But he always avoids the impression of frostiness, which is one of his great gifts. His pictures are not scarce. They are less valuable in the market than those of Cuyp or Hobbema; but, possessing a charm peculiarly their own, they are much sought after by collectors. Out of about one hundred and fifty pictures accessible to the public, the choicest selection is in the Hermitage at St Petersburg. In England paintings from his brush are to be found at the National Gallery and Wallace Collection, and, amongst others, in the collections of the marquess of Bute and Colonel Holford.
2. Eglon van der Neer (1643–1703) was born at Amsterdam, and died at Dusseldorf on the 3rd of May 1703. He was first taught by his father, and then took lessons from Jacob van Loo, whose chief business then consisted in painting figures in the landscapes of Wynants and Hobbema. When van Loo went to Paris in 1663 to join the school from which Boucher afterwards emerged, he was accompanied or followed by Eglon. But, leaving Paris about 1666, he settled at Rotterdam, where he dwelt for many years. Later on he took up his residence at Brussels, and finally went to Dusseldorf, where he entered the service of the elector-palatine Johann Wilhelm von der Pfalz. In each of the places where he stopped Eglon married, and having had three wives became the father of twenty-five children. A portrait of the princess of Neuberg led to his appointment as painter to the king of Spain.
Eglon van der Neer has painted landscapes imitating those of his father, of Berchem, and of Adam Elsheimer. He frequently put the figures into the town views of Jan van der Heyden in competition with Berchem and Adrian van der Velde. His best works are portraits, in which he occasionally came near Ter Borch or Metsu in delicacy of touch, de Hooch in effectiveness of lighting, or Mieris in polish of surface. One of his earliest pieces in which the influence of Ter Borch is apparent is the “Lady with the Book,” of 1665, which was sold with the Bredel collection in 1875. A young woman in white and red satin at Rotterdam, of 1669, recalls Mieris, whose style also reappears in Eglon’s “Cleopatra” at Buckingham Palace. Two landscapes with “Tobit and the Angel,” dated 1685 and 1694, in the museums of Berlin and Amsterdam, illustrate his fashion of setting Scripture scenes in Dutch backgrounds. The most important of his sacred compositions is the “Esther and Ahasuerus,” of 1696, in the Uffizi at Florence. But Eglon varied his practice also with arrangements of hunting and hawking parties, pastures and fords, and cavalry skirmishes. The latest of his panels is a mountain landscape of 1702 in the gallery of Augsburg. (J. A. C.; P. G. K.)
NEERWINDEN, a village of Belgium in the province of Liége, a few miles E. by S. of Tirlemont, which gives its name to two great battles, the first fought in 1693 between the Anglo-Allied army under William III. of England and the French under the duke of Luxemburg, and the second in 1793 between the Austrians under Prince Josias of Coburg and the French under General Dumouriez.
Battle of Neerwinden or Landen, 1693 (see Grand Alliance, War of the):—Luxemburg, having by feints induced William to detach portions of his army, rapidly drew together superior numbers in face of the Allied camps, which lay in a rough semicircle from Elissem on the right to Neerlanden, and thence along the Landen brook on the left' (July 18-28, 1693). William had no mind to retire over the Geete river, and entrenched a strong line from Laer through Neerwinden to Neerlanden. On the right section of this line (Laer to Neerwinden) the ground was much intersected and gave plenty of cover for both sides, and this section, being regarded as the key of the position, was strongly garrisoned; in the centre the open ground between Neerwinden and Neerlanden was solidly entrenched, and in front of it Rumsdorp was held as an advanced post. The left at Neerlanden rested upon the Landen brook and was difficult of access. William’s right, as his line of retreat lay over the Geete, was his dangerous flank, and Luxemburg was aware that, the front of the Allies being somewhat long for the numbers defending it, the intervention of troops drawn from one wing to reinforce the other would almost certainly be too late. Under these conditions Luxemburg’s general plan was to throw the weight of his attack on the Laer-Neerwinden section, and specially on Neerwinden itself, and to economize his forces—as “economy of force” was understood before Napoleon’s time—elsewhere, delivering holding attacks or demonstrations as might be necessary, and thus preventing the Allied centre and left from assisting the right.
Luxemburg had about 80,000 men to William’s 50,000. Opposite 'the entrenchments of the centre he drew up nearly the whole of his cavalry in six lines, with two lines of infantry intercalated. A corps of infantry and dragoons was told off for the attack of Neerlanden and Rumsdorp, and the troops destined for the main attack, 28,000 of all arms, formed up in heavy masses opposite Neerwinden. This proportion of about one-third of the whole force to be employed in the decisive attack in the event proved insufficient. The troops opposite the Allied centre and left had to act with the greatest energy to fulfil their containing mission, and at Laer-Neerwinden the eventual success of the attack was bought only at the price of the utter exhaustion of the troops.
After a long cannonade the French columns moved to the attack, converging on Neerwinden; a smaller force assaulted Laer. The edge of the villages was carried, but in the interior a murderous struggle began, every foot of ground being contested, and after a time William himself, leading a heavy counter-attack, expelled the assailants from both villages. A second attack, pushed with the same energy, was met with the same determination, and meanwhile the French in other parts of the field had pressed their demonstrations home. Even the six lines of cavalry in the centre, after enduring the fire of the Allies for many hours, trotted over the open and up to the entrenchments to meet with certain defeat, and at Neerlanden and Rumsdorp there was
