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Buried on 15 November 1691: Aelbert Cuyp
(or Aelbrecht Kiup), Dordrecht painter and draftsman, born on 20 October
1620. He was the only child of Jacob Gerritszoon Cuyp [1594-1652], who was
the half-brother of Benjamin Gerritszoon Cuyp [bapt. Dec 1612 – 28 Aug 1652
bur.].
— One of the most important landscape painters of 17th-century Netherlands,
Aelbert Cuyp combined a wide range of sources and influences, most notably
in the application of lighting effects derived from Italianate painting
to typical Dutch subjects. Such traditional themes as townscapes, winter
scenes, cattle pieces and equestrian portraits were stylistically transformed
and given new grandeur. Aelbert was virtually unknown outside his native
town, and his influence in the 17th century was negligible. He became popular
in the late 18th century, especially in England.
— LINKS
— River
Landscape with Riders (1655)
— The
Avenue at Meerdervoort (1651, 70x99cm) _ This view was probably commissioned
for one of the Meerdervoort family who lived in the Huis te Meerdervoort
which is seen on the left.
— The
Dairy Maid (1655, 106x172cm) _ From the 1650s onward golden sunlight
becomes the all-pervading element in Cuyp's paintings. It spreads warmth
and beauty over the Dutch countryside, where sturdy animals — most
often cows — take the place of human heroes. They stand or rest in
complete harmony with nature, breathing the invigorating air of the never-distant
sea. Herds of cows in Cuyp's paintings can be seen as allusions to the pride
the Dutch took in their celebrated, profitable dairy industry. In literature
and emblems of the time the cow was used as a symbol of various abstract
ideas (fertility, loyalty, wealth, moderation, and as a symbol of the Netherlands).
—
The Negro Page (1652, 143x227cm) _ After about 1642 Cuyp came under
the influence of painters in Utrecht like Jan Both, who had worked for several
years in Italy. His tight descriptive early style, nurtured by Jan van Goyen
and Salomon van Ruysdael, now suddenly gave way to a broader, more effulgent
style in which the landscape is soaked in a golden light. This style reaches
its climax during the 1650s when Cuyp created an imaginary landscape based
on personal recollections of the North, but transformed by an appreciation
of the South, particularly the Italian campagna, derived from other painters.
A distant view, bathed in mist and the warm glow of a late afternoon light,
proved irresistible to early collectors. River Landscape with Horseman
and Peasants, which was painted around 1655, is perhaps the finest
example of Cuyp's mature style, but The Negro Page, dating in all
probability from a few years earlier, is not far removed in quality. The
types of the buildings, the hilly background and the lake are common to
both paintings and may be a reflection of Cuyp's journey up the Rhine as
far as Nijmegen and Kleve, near the German border, at the beginning of the
1650s.
Cuyp was economical with his motifs and several
of those in The Negro Page recur in other paintings. For example,
in Huntsman halted Cuyp deploys similar horses, dogs and groom
in a different composition. Dappled horses and negro pages are frequently
found in other works by the artist of comparable date. The spaniel in the
foreground of the present work is similarly posed in the painting of Orpheus.
Some of the motifs are the subject of preparatory drawings either by Cuyp
or his studio, such as the spaniel, the greyhound and the vegetation on
the left. The figure on the right facing the viewer has been tentatively
identified as one of Cornelis van Beveren's sons, perhaps Willem (born 1624)
who was appointed Bailiff and Dyke-Reeve of the Lande van Strien in 1648.
This identification is based on the fact that his mount's horse brass is
in the form of a fleur-de-lys, which suggests a connection with France (a
knighthood was conferred on Cornelis van Beveren by the French king, Louis
XIII).
Cuyp spent nearly all of his life in Dordrecht.
His marriage in 1650 to Cornelia Boschman, the widow of a wealthy Regent,
led to a decline in his artistic output as he devoted more time to a career
in public life. His work was particularly appreciated by members of the
Regent class in Dordrecht, and Cuyp deliberately cultivated the social mores
in the paintings dating from the 1650s. These social distinctions are detectable
in dress, the emphasis on equitation, the relationship of the figures to
architecture and the prominence of servants.
— Peasants
with Four Cows by the River Merwede (38x50cm) _ Cuyp also made paintings
of the lively activity on the great rivers of the Netherlands, most often
the wide Merwede that forks at Dordrecht into the North Maas and Lower Maas.
It was Dordrecht's location at this juncture thast made it one of the principal
cities of the country until traffic on the Maas was diverted to Rotterdam.
Cuyp's river scenes are usually set late in the afternoon and are seen against
a luminous, sunny sky that sparkles and glistens on the calm water.
— View
of Dordrecht (1655, 98x138cm) _ Aelbert Cuyp lived and worked in Dordrecht
which, although a small provincial town, had a flourishing local school
of painting.
Nicolaes Maes, Samuel
van Hoogstraten (02 Aug 1627 – 19 October 1678) and Aert
de Gelder also worked in the town.
Cuyp's early landscape style is close both
in its grey-green palette and sketchy technique to that of Jan van Goyen
but in the early 1640s his style was transformed by his encounter with the
landscape style which the Utrecht artist Jan Both had developed during his
stay in Italy. Cuyp never visited Italy but he developed an idiosyncratic
version of Both's style. He bathed his very Dutch landscapes in a golden
Italian sunlight which sparkles on the water and warms the stones of the
buildings. Having adopted and refined his version of the Italianate landscape
style, Cuyp practised it for many years of a successful career, which he
ended as a member of the regent class of Dordrecht and an elder of the Reformed
Church, the owner of a fine town house and an extensive country estate.
Because his style does not develop significantly
his paintings are difficult to date but this view of his native town from
the River Maas was probably painted in about 1655. The outline of the city
is dominated by the profiles of the Groothooftspoort on the left and the
squat tower of the Grote Kerk, a familiar landmark in Cuyp's many views
of his home town, to the right.
— Young
Herdsman with Cows (1658) _ In this painting the strong horizontal of
the standing cow is echoed in the hazy distance of the rolling country and
lends firmness and structure to the whole design. As in Rembrandt's mature
phase, which is approximately contemporaneous, this landscape shows classical
elements which strengthen the compositional power. Horizontals and verticals
are coordinated with the Baroque diagonals, which are still alive and help
to create a mighty spaciousness. The atmospheric quality is as important
as ever in uniting the whole impression. Light breaks now with greater intensity
through the clouds and the clouds themselves gain in substance and volume.
The sky forms a gigantic vault above the earth.
— Cows
in the Water (59x74cm) _ Cuyp was not only a landscape painter, although
there is no doubt that his most attractive and significant works belong
to this genre. His range covered conversation pieces, seascapes, portraits
and group portraits, but he most frequently depicted animals and landscapes
with human figures engaged in fishing, hunting or riding. The setting is
generally the countryside around his native town of Dordrecht, and his pictures
show us the Meuse estuary with its low coastline, boats at their moorings
and cattle grazing. The pictures are characterized by an atmosphere of serenity
and calm, with glistening water, soft clouds, gentle landscape, cattle whose
smooth coats shine in the evening light and human figures engrossed in work,
all combining in a peaceful harmony.
— Evening
Landscape with Horsemen and Shepherds (1658) _ Cuyp also made paintings
of the lively activity on the great rivers of the Netherlands, most often
the wide Merwede that forks at Dordrecht into the North Maas and Lower Maas.
It was Dordrecht's location at this juncture that made it one of the principal
cities of the country until traffic on the Maas was diverted to Rotterdam.
Cuyp's river scenes are usually set late in the
afternoon and are seen against a luminous, sunny sky that sparkles and glistens
on the calm water. He knew Dutch river life intimately. He travelled up
the Rhine, and along the Maas, and the Waal making numerous drawings of
huge sailing vessels, small craft, rafts, and also views of the land from
the water. He was equally at home working on a large or a small scale, and
could fill a canvas with the massive dark hull and rigging of a clumsy passage
boat making way to a pier or with the decorative and elegant silhouettes
of colorful figures on horseback riding into the evening sky . In grandeur
of composition Cuyp often matches Ruisdael and the best of Hobbema's work.
As a colorist he seems even superior by the glow and richness of his warm
palette both in his land and sea pictures.
— The
Ferry Boat (1654, 72x90cm) _ Cuyp also made paintings of the lively
activity on the great rivers of the Netherlands, most often the wide Merwede
that forks at Dordrecht into the North Maas and Lower Maas. It was Dordrecht's
location at this juncture thast made it one of the principal cities of the
country until traffic on the Maas was diverted to Rotterdam. Cuyp's river
scenes are usually set late in the afternoon and are seen against a luminous,
sunny sky that sparkles and glistens on the calm water.
— The
Maas at Dordrecht (1660, 115x170cm) _ Holland’s Maas river flows through
France and Belgium, where it is known as the Meuse. In Aelbert Cuyp’s radiant
vista over the Maas’ ocean port at Dordrecht, crowds jam the docks, bugles
and drums sound fanfares, and cannons fire salutes. Near the end of the
Thirty Years’ War, Dordrecht hosted a two-week festival in honor of 30'000
soldiers. On 12 July 1646, a huge fleet of merchant and navy ships set sail
to end the happy furlough and return the men home.
This vast, sunny composition specifically
accents one figure: the young man standing in the dinghy beside the large
ship. The anchored ships at the left create a wedge-shaped mass that points
toward him, as do some rigging lines. His head lies directly before the
horizon, and his stark black outfit is silhouetted dramatically against
the palest area of the picture, the morning mist over the far shore. Because
he wears a sash with Dordrecht’s city colors of red and white, he may be
the festival’s master of ceremonies and is probably the patron who commissioned
Cuyp to document this historic event.
— River
Landscape (1658, 123x241cm) _ This large canvas, arguably the greatest
of all Cuyp's landscapes, was probably painted in the late 1650s, and represents
the culmination of his career as a landscape painter. Following his marriage
to a wealthy widow in 1658, Cuyp seems to have abandoned painting. Cuyp's
patrons, with those of his father, the portrait painter, Jacob Gerritsz.
Cuyp, appear to have been members of the regent families of Dordrecht and
this landscape, with its remarkable effects of sunlight and the extraordinary
delicacy in the treatment of details, was presumably intended to hang in
the house of a member of this group which Cuyp joined by marriage. In a
print of 1764, made shortly after the painting arrived in England, it is
identified as a view of the River Maas at Dordrecht. In fact, it is an imaginary
landscape, with mountains on a scale which cannot be found in The Netherlands.
Cuyp may, however, have referred to drawings of actual views he made in
his sketchbooks, particularly those made on a visit to Nijmegen and Cleves
in 1651-1652.
The painting was purchased in the United
Provinces by Captain William Baillie in about 1760. He acted as an agent
for John, Earl of Bute, in the formation of the art collection which hung
at Luton Hoo, Bedfordshire. According to Benjamin West, it was this picture
which began the rage for landscapes by Cuyp among British collectors. On
18 May 1818, Joseph Farington wrote in his diary: 'I went to the British
Institution and there met Mr. West and I went round the exhibition with
him examining all the pictures. While looking at Lord Bute's picture by
Cuyp, he said that picture was brought to England by the late Captn. Baillie,
and was the first picture by that master known in England. Having been seen
pictures by Cuyp were eagerly sought for and many were introduced and sold
to advantage'.
— River-bank
with Cows (1650) Cuyp's earliest dated landscapes of 1639 are astonishingly
eclectic, but by 1641 he was painting panoramic views of the Dutch countryside
in the monochromatic mode of van Goyen. The young Cuyp, however, favoured
a distinct yellow tonality as against van Goyen greyish and brown hues.
More important for Cuyp's subsequent development was the impact of Dutch
landscapists who brought an Italianate style from Rome back to Holland;
Cuyp himself never travelled to the south. Since very few of Cuyp's landscapes
are dated, and none is dated after 1645, it is difficult to say precisely
when the characteristic golden light, reminiscent of the Campagna the artist
never saw, replaces the earlier paler one, and when mountain ranges, herds
of cattle, and figures conspicuously set off against a sky begin to play
an important role in his compositions. But by 1645 distinct traces of the
style of Cornelis
Poelenburgh, a member of the first generation of Italianate painters,
and Jan
Both, the leading artist of the following generation of Italianate landscapists,
are evident. Jan Both became Cuyp's principal source of inspiration. The
River-bank with Cows shows how rapidly he assimilated Both's motifs
and sun-drenched light. From this time onward golden sunlight becomes the
all-pervading element in Cuyp's paintings. It spreads warmth and beauty
over the Dutch countryside, where sturdy animals — most often cows
— take the place of human heroes. |
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