| Aelbert Cuyp was Considered one of seventeenth century Holland's supreme masters of landscape. Cuyp has often been called the Dutch Claude because of his brilliant creation of sundrenched scenes. He specialized in images of peaceful riverbanks upon which placid cows graze or ruminate, as well as painted woodlands with riders or hunters. His active career spans roughly 1640 to 1665 during which he achieved an unparalled mastery of light, atmosphere, and form. His delicate and glorious color harmonies and his reverent treatment of even the most humble subject have been extensively celebrated well into the nineteenth century, when he was admired by the leading British landscape painters, including Wilson, Gainsborough, Constable, and Turner He was baptized in Dordrecht in 1620, the son and later pupil,of the portrait painter Jacob Gerritsz Cuyp. Our only other early document records his marriage in Dordrecht in 1658. He rarely left his native city, which he often depicted. Around 1642 he evidently took a sketching tour of the towns and countryside of Holland and Utrecht. Ten years later he made a trip up the Rhine to Nijmegen, Emmerich, with detours to Elten and Kleve. After his marriage to Cornelia Boschman the widow of a naval officer and the daughter of a noted clergyman, his painting career seems to have slowed down. Later documents mention a move to a new house, various positions of honor, and his ultimate appointment to the High Court of South Holland. It is thought that after 1658 his painting became a secondary occcupation. After his death in 1691, no paintings by other artists were found in his home, an atypical situation for a Dutch painter of that time. The early phase of Cuyp's career reflects the influence of his father, Jacob Gerritsz, and of Jan van Goyen* and Jan Both,* Though Cuyp rarely dated his pictures, a number of works are placed early in his career; they include River Landscape with a Bridge signed, Frankfurt am Main, Stadelsches Kunstinstitut und Stadtische Galerie and River Scene with Cattle and Angiers signed, London, National Gallery, which reflect van Goyen's compositional approach the low horizon line, monochrome grayish yellow coloration, and brushwork. Among the finer works from his early period is the View of Dordrecht now cut in two: the right half in Leipzig, Museum der bildenden Kunste, the left half in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. After the mid 1640s, Cuyp responded to the paintings of Jan Both and Jan Asselijn, who had recently returned from Rome and brought with them the golden Italian lighting in their landscapes. In addition, Both introduced the concept of contre-jour, or lighting that faces the sun , producing a new potential for composition by contrasting brightly lit areas with dramatic shadows. As his interest in contre jour lighting developed, Cuyp's props his figures, animals, and boats became larger within the scale of the picture, and the color range became more daring and subtle. In this period his treatment of the coloristic possibilities of sunrise and sunset went further than any painter of the time and anticipated the works of Turner. Later, by 1650, scholars see a change in Cuyp's manner. His approach is less free and his manner more formal and refined. Among the masterpieces of his later period are the View of Nijmegen small version, signed, Indianapolis Museum of Art and the Cattle with Horsemen and Peasants signed, London, National Gallery. Though mute and reflective and completely lacking in interaction with one another, the people and animals in these and other later paintings are united by a marvelous waning sun and the reflective mood it inspires, not only in the characters within the painting, but in us as viewers. Lack of dates and documents prevents a complete chronology for Cuyp. Dated works exist from 1639,1641, and 1646. Other dates can be determined through circumstantial evidence, such as costume or identification of a sitter in one of his portraits. Besides his landscape and portraits, Cuyp occasionally produced religious subjects and history paintings, but his most valued works are his depictions of tranquil moments when horses, cattle, and people are eternally transfixed in the warm incandescence of the sun. Though carefully composed, such works are never contrived; though true to nature, they transcend to the level of poetry. A provincial master of exceptional originality and independence, Cuyp had no official career as a painter, contenting himself with a quiet existence in Dordrecht, which he so admirably celebrated in his paintings. He was so popular, however, that he may have had an active studio, and he certainly had followers and imitators during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. |
