Aelbert Cuyp

Aelbert Cuyp was born in Dordrecht, Netherlands, on October 20, 1620.

Cuyp belonged from a family of artists. His uncle Benjamin and grandfather Gerrit were stained glass cartoon designers. His father, Jacob Gerritszoon Cuyp was a famous portraitist.

Cuyp received his training in painting from his father whose painting style and content is reflected in Cuyp’s paintings.

After the death of his father in 1651 and mother in 1654, Cuyp inherited a large property and became one of the richest citizens of Dordrecht.

In the early 1640s, Aelbert Cuyp was influenced by the painting style of Jan van Goyen.

This is noticeable in his use of the straw yellow and light brown tones and the broken-brush technique in two of his famous paintings, ‘River Scene, Two Men Conversing’ that was finished in 1641 and ‘Hilly Landscape with Cows and Shepherds’ in 1665.

In 1655, Cuyp produced ‘Young Herdsmen with Cows’, a landscape showing his use of aerial perspective and illusions of vast depth.

His second stylistic phase developed under the influence of Jan Both who returned to Utrecht in the mid-1640s.

Jan Both was influenced by the lighting style of Claude Lorrain’s paintings in Rome and Cuyp used the same style to his advantage in creating ‘River Landscape with Horseman and Peasants’ (1658-60) of the Boymans-Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam and ‘Travelers in a Hilly Landscape’ (1650-52).

One of Cuyp’s famous paintings is ‘The Mass at Dordrecht’, a view of the banks of the Maas and Waal near Dordrecht, completed in the early 1650s. Dordrecht’s scenic beauty had been the subject matter of Cuyp’s paintings time and again. It is seen in his ‘The Maas at Dordrecht in a storm’(1648-50), Dordrecht harbor by moonlight (1643-45). Some of his other major compositions are ‘The Mussel Eater’ (1650), ‘Cows in a River’ (1654), ‘The Negro Page’ (1652).