Landscape by Moonlight

A full moon rises over a wide river landscape, its pale light spilling across the water between low banks and dark silhouetted trees and buildings. Aert van der Neer was the Dutch master of night and moonlight, and this wide, placid view of about 1650–55 is among his most admired scenes. The soft silvery glow on the water, the deep blue of the sky and the stillness of the scene capture the hushed atmosphere that made his moonlit rivers and canals the most celebrated of their kind in the Dutch school.