Eglon van der Neer began his career as a pupil of his father, Aert van der Neer. Later on he was apprenticed to Jacob van Loo. He travelled to France and enjoyed the patronage of the Comte de Dona, the Governor of the State of Orange. In 1670 he became a member of the Guild in The Hague.

On the death of his first wife, Maria Wagensvelt, van der Neer married Maria du Chaiel, a well known miniaturist, and in 1679 established himself in Rotterdam. In 1687 he became a court painter to the Spanish King, Carlos II, in Brussels. Having settled in Brussels, he started to concentrate on depicting biblical and mythological scenes set in landscapes. His first real landscapes, without the addition of mythological or biblical staffage figures, date from the early 1690s. Van der Neer's landscapes betray a remarkable stylistic variation.

In 1690 the artist was called to Dusseldorf where he replaced the court painter there, Johannes Spilberg, who had died in that year. In 1697 he was married for the third time to Adriana Spilberg, widow of the artist Willem Breckvelt. The historian Houbraken records that van der Neer fathered sixteen children by his first wife and nine by his second!

His most notable pupil was Adrian van de Werff.

Museums where examples of the artist's work can be found include:
Aix, Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum), Antwerp, Cologne, Copenhagen, Dresden,
Hamburg, Florence, St. Petersburg, London (Wallace Collection), Madrid (Prado), Munich, Paris (Louvre), Rotterdam and Stockholm.