General Note for Enlarged Plan Drawing

Overview

This wide, panoramic view of a river valley has long been considered one of Aelbert Cuyp'south almost masterful works. In the soft calorie-free of the late afternoon, the boiling air softens the mural. Two brightly dressed horsemen take paused their elegant white and chestnut-colored steeds near a cluster of trees. Behind them, two men, 1 holding his mule's ternion, rest in the shade of the trees while keeping an heart on a small flock of sheep and a cow. On the left, some other herdsman tends to two cows, and in the middle altitude a rider on a galloping horse provides the only existent sign of activity. Farther back, the h2o's mirrorlike quality suggests calm conditions in which the sailboats will make just limited progress on the meandering river.

This painting is a prime case of the broad panoramic landscapes that Cuyp began to pigment during the 1650s. The two hills surmounted past buildings that appear in the background are from the Rhine valley near the towns of Kleve and Kalkar, not far from the Dutch border. Cuyp visited this region effectually 1651–1652 and made drawings of these hills in a sketchbook he compiled on this trip. This distant panorama, however, is an imaginative evocation of the valley that he later painted in his studio.

Entry

This broad, panoramic view of a river valley has long been considered one of Cuyp's most masterful works. [1] [1]
The auction catalog of the sale held in Dordrecht in 1785 describes the painting equally having "an unusually beautiful execution" and equally being "one of the best of this master" ("dit Konststuk is van een ongemeene schoone uitwerking, en een der beste van deezen Meester"). The aureate calorie-free of the late afternoon sun and the moist air in the broad valley soften the landscape, casting a quiet, peaceful spell over the scene. In the foreground ii elegant horsemen, whose exotic costumes point that they have come from a distant country, interruption to talk over their road. Behind them, in the shade of a grouping of large trees, two shepherds residuum amid their animals. Another herdsman and his cows appear at the left, while a lone rider on a galloping horse in the middle distance is the scene'southward simply active element.

The pastoral quality of the painting reflects the influence of Dutch artists who had traveled to Italy and brought back images of the Roman campagna. Particularly important was the work of Jan Both (Dutch, 1615/1618 - 1652), who similarly set off views of distant river valleys with elegant trees grouped to one side. [two] [2]
See January Both, An Italianate Evening Mural . Both besides favored the contre-jour furnishings of the tardily afternoon lite and oft painted long diagonal shadows cast by the setting sun—atmospheric elements particularly apparent in this work. Withal, the connections between Cuyp'south pastoral scenes and Both'southward Italianate views can be overstated. Peasants with their donkeys laissez passer through Both'south mountainous landscapes, whereas in this work, elegant foreigners ride finely bred steeds through a wide, open up landscape. The distinctive graphic symbol of Cuyp's travelers indicates that his approach is fundamentally different from Both'southward, whose peasants fit comfortably into his landscapes as integral components of the artist's idealized vision of the Roman campagna. Cuyp's travelers, on the other manus, do not belong to the state nor practise they fit within it. The exotic horsemen provide striking visual accents for the composition, simply they too engage the viewer, raising questions about the riders' identities, their travels, and their destination.

Despite the evocative quality of Cuyp's pastoral scene, the landscape is based on a real site: the Rhine valley near the towns of Kleve and Kalkar, not far from the Dutch edge. The identifying features are ii groundwork hills: the Monterberg, the steep-sided hill on the left with twin towers at its meridian, and the Eltenberg, surmounted by the partially ruined monastery of Hochelten. These hills, likewise depicted in other paintings, [3] [3]
See Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., ed., Aelbert Cuyp (Washington, DC, 2001), no. 29.
are recognizable from drawings of these sites that Cuyp made on his trip to this area of the Rhine in almost 1651–1652. [4] [four]
Also see Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., ed., Aelbert Cuyp (Washington, DC, 2001), nos. 91, 92. Cuyp based some other painting on the view from the contrary direction. Several versions of this composition exist, the all-time of which seems to exist that in the Castle Howard Collection, Yorkshire (Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, 10 vols. [Esslingen and Paris, 1907–1928], 2: no. 71).

Nevertheless, a comparing of Horsemen and Herdsmen with Cattle with these drawings indicates that Cuyp freely interpreted topographic elements in this painting. He depicts the Monterberg as a much higher hill than information technology is in reality, and the two towers are seen to such advantage simply from the opposite viewpoint. [5] [v]
Cuyp originally painted the Monterberg every bit a somewhat lower hill. He seems to take enlarged it for compositional reasons. Finally, the Monterberg and the Eltenberg practice not lie in such close proximity and cannot exist seen together in the manner that Cuyp has represented them. [6] [6]
Compare with the more topographically accurate depictions produced by Joris van der Haagen (cartoon, Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, inv. no. 11821) or Romeyn de Hooghe (engraving, reproduced in Friedrich Gorissen, Conspectus Cliviae. Dice klevische Residenz in der Kunst des 17. Jahrhunderts [Kleve, 1964], no. 106). Given the liberty with which the artist combined these landscape elements, the towns vaguely discernible in the river valley are probably Cuyp'due south own creations, intended to suggest the character of this beautiful stretch along the Rhine. [7] [7]
J. Thou. van der Haagen, former chief, museum and monuments division, UNESCO, Paris (letter, November 29, 1964, in NGA curatorial files), tentatively identifies the towns equally Griethause (to the left) and Emmerich (immediately to the left of the stake horse, partly behind the twigs of the foreground sapling).

Aside from reusing landscape elements, Cuyp too repeated figures and animal motifs in his paintings. The grey horse, for example, is identical to that in Lady and Gentleman on Horseback , [8] [8]
See Aelbert Cuyp, Lady and Admirer on Horseback . and the galloping horse and rider reappear in Michiel and Cornelis Pompe van Meerdervoort with Their Tutor. [9] [nine]
Run across Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., ed., Aelbert Cuyp (Washington, DC, 2001), no. 29. Cuyp's ease with recycling his motifs and the fact that he rarely dated his landscapes brand it difficult to constitute an exact chronology for his work. Nevertheless, the expansiveness of the panorama; the soft, atmospheric qualities of the river valley, which derive from Cuyp'due south broad, planar technique of applying pigment; and the elegance of the riders are elements associated with paintings he started in the mid-to-late 1650s. An increasing artificiality of light effects and the introduction in the foreground of twisted saplings and large decorative leaves are other distinctive characteristics of Cuyp's mature mode. This artificiality is peculiarly striking in this painting, in which diagonal shadows fall across rocks and foliage without any indication of their three-dimensionality. Landscape with Horse Trainers [fig. 1] [fig. ane] Aelbert Cuyp, Landscape with Horse Trainers, nigh 1655 (or 1660), oil on canvas, The Toledo Museum of Art, Purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Souvenir of Edward Drummond Libbey, 1960.ii , which hung as a pendant to the National Gallery motion picture when the two paintings were together in the Van Slingeland collection in the eighteenth century, stylistically contains similar characteristics. [10] [ten]
John Smith, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Almost Eminent Dutch, Flemish and French Painters, 9 vols. (London, 1829–1842), 5:288, and Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, 10 vols. (Esslingen and Paris, 1907–1928), 2: no. 430. Both Smith and De Groot land that the ii pictures were hung as pendants in the Van Slingeland collection, information that they would have gained from Gerard Hoet, Catalogus of naamlyst van schilderyen . . ., 2 vols. (The Hague, 1752/1770), 2:495, who listed Horsemen and Herdsmen with Cattle as one of a "pair of landscapes," the other of which was probably Landscape with Equus caballus Trainers. The Toledo motion picture, moreover, came directly afterward the Washington picture in the 1785 Van Slingeland sale catalog (run across note ii above) and was described as "een Meesterstuk van konst en een weerga van de vorige" ("a masterpiece of fine art and a pendant of the previous [work]″); run across Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., ed., Aelbert Cuyp (Washington, DC, 2001), no. 39, 170 and 206.

Arthur One thousand. Wheelock Jr.

April 24, 2014

Inscription

lower right: A.cuijp.

Provenance

Johan van der Linden van Slingeland [1701-1782], Dordrecht, by 1752;[1] (his estate sale, at his residence by Yver and Delfos, Dordrecht, 22 August 1785 and days following, no. 71); Fouquet.[2] Albert Dubois, Paris; (his sale, Le Brun and Julliot at Hôtel Bullion, Paris, 20 Dec 1785 and days post-obit, no. sixteen, bought in). William Smith [1756-1835], Norwich;[3] sold privately to Edward Gray, who sold information technology in 1830.[4] Alexander Baring, afterwards 1st businesswoman Ashburton [1774-1848], Bath House, London, by 1834;[5] by inheritance in his family to Francis Denzil Edward Baring, 5th baron Ashburton [1866-1938], The Grange, Northington, Hampshire;[6] sold 1907 with the entire Ashburton collection to a syndicate of (Thomas Agnew & Sons, London; Arthur J. Sulley & Co., London; and Asher Wertheimer, London);[seven] sold 1909 to Peter A.B. Widener, Lynnewood Hall, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania;[8] inheritance from Estate of Peter A.B. Widener by souvenir through power of appointment of Joseph E. Widener, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania; gift 1942 to NGA.

Associated Names

Agnew & Sons, Ltd., Thomas
Baring, 1st businesswoman Ashburton, Alexander
Baring, 2nd baron Ashburton, William Bingham
Baring, 3rd Baron Ashburton, Francis
Baring, quaternary Baron Ashburton, Alexander Hugh
Baring, 5th Businesswoman Ashburton, Francis Denzil Edward
Delfos, Ab.
Dubois, Albert
Fouquet
Greyness, Edward
Lebrun
Smith, William
Sulley & Co., Arthur J.
Widener, Joseph E.
Widener, Peter Arrell Brown
Yver, P. & J.
van Slingeland, Johan van der Linden

Exhibition History

1990

Italian Recollections: Dutch Painters of the Aureate Historic period, The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1990, no. 28.

2001

Aelbert Cuyp, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; The National Gallery, London; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 2001-2002, no. 38, repro.

2002

Loan for display with permanent collection , Koninklijk Kabinet van Schilderijen Mauritshuis, The Hague, 2002-2004.

Technical Summary

The original, medium-weight, apparently-weave textile support has been lined with the tacking margins trimmed. Cusping on all sides indicates that the original dimensions have been retained. The footing consists of two layers: a lower layer containing white and ruddy pigments and an upper midtone grey layer.[1] The upper gray layer acts every bit a center tone from which the creative person worked both upward and down, applying lighter tones to create the heaven, ships, and buildings and darker tones to define leaf of the middleground.

The pigment is applied in thin layers, both opaque and translucent, blended wet-into-wet with minimal brushmarking and no observable impasto. When creating the sky, Cuyp appears to have applied a lighter gray blue over the middle tone grayness, and then scraped through it with the butt cease of his brush to place the outlines of forms against the heaven. This indented line is visible under magnification but in the sky, in the following areas: forth the outline of the left mounted figure and in parts of the left outline of his equus caballus's head, in the left side of the deject, and intermittently where the leaf in the trees at the height correct meets the sky. This technique may have been used to refine outlines in places rather than as a tool for general placement, since the line is not apparent in all areas. It is also possible that this indented line was over again mostly visible, but that it was occasionally covered upward by succeeding layers of paint.

Cuyp left large areas of the foreground, the horsemen, the largest tree at correct, and the hill with the tower in the left middleground in reserve. The sheep and seated figures at the far correct were painted on acme of the trees and foliage. In the middleground mural, the artist painted a foreground sapling before adding the peach-colored tonality to the hills, an unusual sequence of paint awarding. Cuyp contradistinct the position of the ii towers on the Monterberg, the loma in the distant left, and raised the height of the colina.

Numerous scattered tiny losses, especially along the edges only too in the face of the seated figure at the right, signal a history of flaking, merely abrasion is slight. The painting was lined in 1967. At that time varnish and inpainting were practical over the exhisting discolored varnish. In 1997, the discolored varnish layers and inpainting were removed when the painting underwent a thorough conservation treatment.

[1] The painting was treated in 1997, at which time the ground layers were characterized by cantankerous-sectional analysis. The analysis was performed past the NGA Scientific Research Department (see written report dated August 26, 1997, in NGA Conservation section files). During this same handling, the NGA Scientific Research department too analyzed the pigments using polarized lite microscopy and plant them to be consequent with the period (run into report dated May xix, 1997, in NGA Conservation department files). The medium was also analyzed by the NGA Scientific Inquiry department using infrared microscopy and gas chromatography and found to be drying oil (see report dated October 8, 1997, in NGA Conservation department files).

Bibliography

1752

Hoet, Gerard. Catalogus of naamlyst van schilderyen. 2 vols. The Hague, 1752: ii:495.

1829

Smith, John. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish and French Painters. 9 vols. London, 1829-1842: 5(1834):288, no. x.

1854

Jervis-White-Jervis, Lady Marian. Painting and Celebrated Painters, Ancient and Modern. 2 vols. London, 1854: two:217, 325.

1854

Waagen, Gustav Friedrich. Treasures of Art in Keen Britain: Being an Business relationship of the Chief Collections of Paintings, Drawings, Sculptures, Illuminated Mss.. three vols. Translated by Elizabeth Rigby Eastlake. London, 1854: ii:110.

1891

Cundall, Frank. The Landscape and Pastoral Painters of Holland: Ruisdael, Hobbema, Cuijp, Potter. Illustrated biographies of the bully artists. London, 1891: 163.

1907

Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century. 8 vols. Translated by Edward 1000. Hawke. London, 1907-1927: ii(1909):131, no. 430.

1907

Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis. Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts. x vols. Esslingen and Paris, 1907-1928: ii(1908):125, no. 430.

1913

Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis, and Wilhelm R. Valentiner. Pictures in the collection of P. A. B. Widener at Lynnewood Hall, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania: Early German, Dutch & Flemish Schools. Philadelphia, 1913: unpaginated, repro.

1923

Paintings in the Collection of Joseph Widener at Lynnewood Hall. Intro. by Wilhelm R. Valentiner. Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, 1923: unpaginated, repro.

1930

Holmes, Jerrold. "The Cuyps in America." Fine art in America 18, no. four (June 1930): 185, no. 34.

1931

Paintings in the Collection of Joseph Widener at Lynnewood Hall. Intro. by Wilhelm R. Valentiner. Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, 1931: 40, repro.

1936

Leslie, Shane. American Wonderland: Memories of 4 Tours in the United States of America (1911-1935). London, 1936: 113,115.

1942

National Gallery of Fine art. Works of art from the Widener collection. Washington, 1942: v, no. 612.

1944

Cairns, Huntington, and John Walker, eds. Masterpieces of Painting from the National Gallery of Art. Translated. New York, 1944: 108, color repro.

1948

National Gallery of Art. Paintings and Sculpture from the Widener Collection. Washington, 1948 (reprinted 1959): 57, repro.

1957

Shapley, Fern Rusk. Comparisons in art: A Companion to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. London, 1957 (reprinted 1959): pl. 145.

1961

Hutton, William. "Aelbert Cuyp: The Riding Lesson." Toledo Museum of Art Museum News 4 (1961): 81, 84, repro.

1965

National Gallery of Art. Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. Washington, 1965: 36.

1966

Cairns, Huntington, and John Walker, eds. A Pageant of Painting from the National Gallery of Fine art. 2 vols. Translated. New York, 1966: 1: 246, color repro.

1967

Dattenberg, Heinrich. Niederrheinansichten holländischer Künstler des 17. Jahrhunderts. Die Kunstdenkmäler des Rheinlands 10. Dusseldorf, 1967: 72-73, repro. 79a.

1968

National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 29, repro.

1975

National Gallery of Art. European paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. Washington, 1975: 90, repro.

1975

Reiss, Stephen. Aelbert Cuyp. Boston, 1975: 179, no. 136, repro.

1975

Walker, John. National Gallery of Fine art, Washington. New York, 1975: 298-299, color repro.

1976

Hoet, Gerard. Catalogus of naamlyst van schilderyen. 3 vols. Reprint of 1752 ed. with supplement by Pieter Terwesten, 1770. Soest, 1976: 2:495.

1976

Wittmann, Otto, ed. The Toledo Museum of Fine art: European Paintings. Academy Park, 1976: 47.

1982

White, Christopher. The Dutch Paintings in the Drove of Her Majesty the Queen. Cambridge, 1982: 32.

1984

Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 298, no. 398, color repro.

1985

National Gallery of Art. European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. Washington, 1985: 110, repro.

1986

Sutton, Peter C. A Guide to Dutch Art in America. Washington and G Rapids, 1986: 306.

1990

Duparc, Frederik J., and Linda L. Graif. Italian Recollections: Dutch Painters of the Aureate Age. Exh. cat. Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1990: 109-110, no. 28..

1992

Chong, Alan. "Aelbert Cuyp and the Meanings of Landscape." Ph.D. dissertation, New York Academy, 1992: 405-406, no. 158.

1995

Wheelock, Arthur 1000., Jr. Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, 1995: 46-50, color repro. 49.

2001

Wheelock, Arthur K., Jr. Aelbert Cuyp. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington; National Gallery, London; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Washington, 2001: no. 38, 28, 39-40, 42, 44, 57, 72, 168-169, 205-206, repro.

2003

Waagen, Gustav Friedrich. Treasures of Art in United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland. Translated by Elizabeth Rigby Eastlake. Facsimile edition of London 1854. London, 2003: 2:110.

Related Content

Related Terms

24A81

contre-jour

25H

landscape +Italianate

25H22

canals

25I2

hamlet

25I5

landscape with tower or castle

35

Arcadian scenes

46A16

the rich

46C5

travelling

47I221

herdsmen

48B

creative person +Jan Both + influence of

48B121

model

55B2

luxury

61D

etc. +Lower Rhine

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Source: https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.1153.html

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