Lady Playing with a Dog

Eglon van der Neer · c. 1670

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

48.5 × 38 cm (19 1/8 × 14 15/16 in.); Framed: 63.2 × 52.8 × 6.4 cm (24 7/8 × 20 3/4 × 2 1/2 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Baroque

Painted around 1670, this intimate domestic scene captures a fashionably dressed woman at leisure with her lapdog, rendered with a stillness and refinement that feels almost frozen in time. Eglon van der Neer was among the most technically accomplished of the Dutch fijnschilders — the "fine painters" who prided themselves on surfaces so smooth that individual brushstrokes disappear entirely. Working in the tradition of Gerard Dou, van der Neer layered thin glazes over a precise underdrawing to achieve a luminous, enamel-like finish. His figures wear the finest silks and satins of the period, and he painted fabric with a descriptive accuracy that made his work exceptionally sought after among wealthy collectors. Van der Neer's reputation was high enough in his lifetime that he was appointed court painter to the Elector Palatine in Düsseldorf in 1690, a distinction rarely granted to Dutch painters of his generation. A hand-painted oil reproduction on canvas honours that tradition of careful, layered work — the glazing, the soft fall of light across the woman's gown, the textural contrast between fur and fabric — in a way that no print ever could. Each reproduction is made to order and carries the warmth of a living original.