right|300px|thumb|upright=1.7|Moonlit Landscape with a View of the New Amstel River and Castle Kostverloren (1647–49); Oil on wood; 57.5 × 89.9 cm, [[Getty Center]]
Aert van der Neer, or Aernout or Artus ( – 9 November 1677), was a landscape painter of the Dutch Golden Age, who specialized in small night scenes lit only by moonlight and fires, and snowy winter landscapes, both often looking down a canal or river. He was a contemporary of Aelbert Cuyp and Meindert Hobbema, and like the latter he lived and died in comparative obscurity.
Biography
<!--Recent (2008) research by René van Dijk of the Gorinchem Regional Archive has established that -->Van der Neer was born in Gorinchem. According to Arnold Houbraken, he worked as a steward to the lords of Arkel, which would account for the absence of any pictures dating from his early years. He became an amateur painter possibly upon contact with the Amsterdam painters Rafael and Joachim Govertsz Camphuysen, whose sister Lysbeth he married in 1629. They had six children: Grietje (1629), Eglon (~1635), Cornelia (1642), Elisabeth (1645), Pieter (1648), and Alida (1650). Five were baptized in the Nieuwe Kerk, not far from Kalverstraat where he lived.
Van der Neer was barely able to support his family by selling his landscapes, which were not highly valued. In 1659 it seemed necessary to supplement his income by keeping a wine tavern, but two years later he went broke. He died at Kerkstraat in abject poverty, and his art was so little esteemed that the pictures left by him were valued at about five shillings apiece. His son Eglon became a portrait painter himself.