sides of the material embroidered, by parallel stitches taken closely together. Buttonhole stitch in relation to art needlework prevails to a great extent in cut linen and drawn-thread work (often called Greek lace), and predominates in the making of needlepoint lace (see Lace). In much of the Persian drawn-thread work, however, it is superseded by whipping or tightly and closely twisting a thread round the undrawn threads of the linen. Whipping has been put to another use in certain 16th-century art needlework for ecclesiastical purposes, where round the gold threads employed as the ground of a design coloured silks are dexterously whipped, closely and openly, producing gradations of tint suffused with a corresponding variation of golden shimmer. Another important branch of art needlework with gold and silver threads is couching. When the metallic threads, arranged so as to lie closely together, are simply stitched flatly to the foundation material, the work is called flat couching or laying, a kind of treatment more frequent in Chinese and Japanese than in European art needlework. Flat couching is also carried out with floss silks. When a design for couching includes effects in relief, stout strings or cords as required by the design are first fastened to the foundation materials, and over them the metallic threads or in some cases coloured gimps are laid, and so stitched as to have an appearance in miniature of varieties of willow-twisting or basket work.
The principle of relief couching is carried much further in certain English art needlework, having cumbersome and grotesque peculiarities, which was done during the reigns of the Stuarts. Crude compositions were wrought in partial relief with padded work, of costumed figures of kings and queens and scriptural persons with a medley of disproportionate animals, insects and trees, &c., in which foliage, wings, &c., were of coloured silk needlepoint lace—the whole being set as often as not in a background of tent or cross-stitch work on canvas. But tent and cross-stitch work (in French point compté) was also used by itself for cushion covers and later for upholstery. In its earlier phases it seems to come under the medieval classification of opus pulvinarum. The reticulations of the canvas or those apparent in finer material governed the stitching and imparted a stiff formal effect to the designs so carried out, a characteristic equally strong in the lacis work, or darning on square mesh net (see Lace).
Applique or applied work belongs as much as patchwork to the medieval category of opus consutum, or stitching stuffs together according to a decorative design, the greater part of which was cut out of material different in colour, and generally in texture, from that of the ground to which it was applied and stitched. Irish art needlework, called Carrickmacross lace, is for the most part of cambric applied or appliqué to net.
Quilting is also a branch of art needlework rather than embroidery. Indians and Persians using a short running stitch have excelled in it in past times. Some good quilting was done in England in the 18th century with chain-stitching which lay on the inner side of the stuff, the outer displaying the design in short stitches. In the account of his voyage to the East Indies, published in 1655, Edward Terry (1590–1665) writes of the Indians “making excellent quilts of satin lined with taffeta betwixt which they put cotton wool and worked them together with silk.” For less bulky quilting, cords have been used; and elaborate designs for quilted linen waistcoats were well done in the 18th century, with fine short stitches that held the cords between the inner and outer materials.
A large number of names have been given to the many modifications of the limited number of essentially different stitches used in plain and art needlework, and on the whole are fanciful rather than really valuable from a technical point of view. Much descriptive information about them, with an abundance of capital illustrations, is given in the Dictionary of Needlework, by J. F. Caulfield and Blanche Saward (London, 1903).
NEEMUCH, or Nimach, a town of Central India, with a British military cantonment, within the state of Gwalior, on
the border of Rajputana, with a station on the Rajputana
railway, 170 m. N. of Mhow. Pop. (1901) 21,588. In 1857 it was
the most southerly place to which the Mutiny extended. The
brigade of native troops of the Bengal army, which was stationed
there, mutinied and marched to Delhi, the European officers
taking refuge in the fort, where they were besieged by a rebel force from Mandasor, and defended themselves gallantly until relieved by the Malwa field force. Since 1895 it has been the headquarters of the political agent in Malwa.
NEENAH, a city of Winnebago county, Wisconsin, U.S.A.,
on the N.W. shore of Lake Winnebago, 82 m. N. by E. of Milwaukee.
Pop. (1890) 5083; (1900) 5954, of whom 1559 were
foreign-born; (1905) 6047; (1910) 5734. It is served by the
Chicago & North-Western, the Chicago, Milwaukee & St Paul,
and the Milwaukee, St Paul & Sault Ste Marie railways, by two
interurban electric railways, and by steamboat lines on the lake
and on the Fox river, which flows out of Lake Winnebago at
this point. Several bridges connect it with Menasha, on the
opposite side of the river, and the two cities form one industrial
community. Doty Island, at the mouth of the river, belongs
partly to Neenah and partly to Menasha. Neenah is a trade
centre of the surrounding agricultural region, in which dairying,
especially cheese-making, is carried on extensively. The Fox
river (with a fall of 12 ft.) furnishes good water-power for the
manufactories. There was a trading post at or near the site of
Neenah during the French régime in Wisconsin, but there was
no actual settlement until well into the 19th century. Neenah
was chartered as a city in 1873; its name is derived from an
Indian word meaning “running water” or “rapids.”
NEER, VAN DER. Aernout and Eglon van der Neer, father and son, were Dutch painters whose lives filled almost the whole of the 17th century.
1. Aernout van der Neer (1603–1677), commonly called Aert or Artus, was the contemporary of Albert Cuyp and Hobbema, and so far like the latter that he lived and died in comparative obscurity. Aernout was born at Gorkum and died at Amsterdam. Houbraken’s statement that Aernout had been a steward to a Dutch nobleman, and an amateur painter, before he settled in Amsterdam and acquired skill with his brush, would account for the absence of any pictures dating from his early years. He died in abject poverty, and his art was so little esteemed that the pictures left by him were valued at about five shillings apiece. Even as early as 1659 he found it necessary to supplement his income by keeping a wine tavern. The earliest pictures in which Aernout coupled his monogram of A. V. and D. N. interlaced with a date are a winter landscape in the Rijks Museum 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. In 1652 Aernout witnessed the fire which consumed the old town-hall of Amsterdam. He made this accident the subject for two or three pictures, now in the galleries of Berlin and Copenhagen. Though Amsterdam appears to have been constantly van der Neer’s domicile, his pictures tell that he was well acquainted with the canals and woods about Haarlem and Leiden, and with the reaches of the Maes and Rhine. Dort, the home of Albert Cuyp, is sometimes found in his pictures, and substantial evidence exists that there was friendship between the two men. At some period of their lives they laid their hands to the same canvases, on each of which they left their joint mark. On some it was the signature of the name, on others the more convincing signature of style. There are landscapes in the collections of the dukes of Bedford and Westminster, in which Cuyp has represented either the frozen Maes with fishermen packing herrings, or the moon reflecting its light on the river’s placid waters. These are models after which van der Neer appears to have worked. The same feeling and similar subjects are found in Cuyp and van der Neer, before and after their partnership. But Cuyp was the leading genius. Van der Neer got assistance from him; Cuyp expected none from van der Neer. He carefully enlivened his friend’s pictures, when asked to do so, with figures and cattle. It is in pictures jointly produced by them that we discover van der Neer’s presence at Dort. We are near
