Aert Van Der Neer had been living in Gorinchem as a steward to the lords of Arkel, (according to Arnold Houbraken, a Dutch painter and writer from Dordrecht, now remembered mainly as a biographer of artists from the Dutch Golden Age), which would account for the absence of any pictures dating from his early years.

He had become an amateur painter possibly upon contact with the local painters Rafael and Jochem Govertsz Camphuysen, whose sister Lysbeth he had married in 1629.

Van Der Neer and his wife could possibly have moved to Gorinchem, where around 1634 their son Eglon could have been born, and who will become a portrait painter himself.

Van der Neer is in 1640 back in Amsterdam and his five children are baptized in Nieuwe Kerk, not far from where he lives.

The earliest pictures in which Van Der Neer had coupled his monogram of A.V. and D.N. interlaced with a date are a winter landscape in the Rijksmuseum at Amsterdam (dated 1639), and another in the Martins collection at Kiel (1642): immature works both, of poor quality.

Far better is the Winter Landscape (1643) in Lady Wantage's collection, and the Moonlight Scene (1644) in the d'Arenberg collection in Brussels.