Horsemen and Herdsmen with Cattle1655/1660
Late golden light rakes across a pasture where two horsemen, one on a white horse and one on a brown, pause beside a herdsman and his flock; the rider in red points with his whip towards the seated figures. More about this work
About this work
Late golden light rakes across a pasture where two horsemen, one on a white horse and one on a brown, pause beside a herdsman and his flock; the rider in red points with his whip towards the seated figures. A cow, a donkey with panniers and nine sheep cluster under tall trees, and beyond, sailboats move along broad waterways dotted with spires and windmills. Cuyp made his name with exactly this kind of scene: the flat river country around Dordrecht bathed in the warm, hazy light he learned from Dutch painters who had worked in Italy. A pearly bank of cloud fills two-thirds of the canvas.
Written by Ochre Editions.
What you’re looking at
Golden sunlight pours across a landscape with three people on horseback and two more people near a flock of sheep, a cow, and a mule in this horizontal painting. The people all have pale, peachy skin. The horizon is about a third of the way up the composition and is lined with towers on distant, hazy, pale yellow hills. Two of the horses are to the right of center, both facing us. The horse on the left is white, and the rider wears an azure-blue tunic and red brimless cap. The other horse is brown with a white blaze, and its rider wears a red tunic and black cap. That second rider points with a whip to the sitting and standing people near the sheep, to the right. Those two people wear brown jackets, and the standing man has a mustache. The seated person rests a long staff over one shoulder. About half of the nine sheep there lie on the ground, and the others stand. The cow dips her head down to the sheep, and the splay-footed donkey has baskets hung to each side. This grouping is in front of a copse of tall trees that nearly reach the top edge of the composition. The third rider is to our left and a short distance away. That dark brown horse gallops to our right. A short distance away, another herdsman along the left edge of the composition wears a red tunic and brown pants, and he rests a long staff on one shoulder. One cow stands and one lies down next to that herdsman. Sunlight rakes across twigs, leafy plants, scrubby growth, and rocks in the foreground, closest to us. Sailboats float on the waterways that stretch horizontally across the painting in the distance, and the land separating those bodies of water is dotted with spires, windmills, towers, and other structures. A dozen dark birds fly high in the sky, which takes up the top two-thirds of the picture. A bank of iridescent yellow and pearly white clouds trundle across the pale blue sky. The artist signed the painting in the lower right corner, “A.cuijp.”
Description from the National Gallery of Art.
How it was made
- Oil paint
- Pigment ground in a drying oil, usually linseed. It dries slowly, so painters could blend on the canvas, build up thin translucent glazes, and rework a picture over weeks. Canvas replaced wooden panels in the 1500s because it is lighter and can be rolled.
Aelbert Cuyp
Dutch, 1620–1691
Cuyp spent his life in Dordrecht, where he trained with his father, the portraitist Jacob Gerritsz. Cuyp. Influenced by Dutch painters returning from Italy, such as Jan Both, he bathed river views, cattle in meadows and riders in a warm, golden light. His work was little known outside Dordrecht in his lifetime but was eagerly collected in Britain from the late eighteenth century.
Written by Ochre Editions.
Rights and the museum’s record
Public domain. The National Gallery of Art has dedicated this image to the public domain under CC0, so anyone may copy, adapt and use it, for any purpose, without asking. Our prints and files are reproductions made from the museum’s image; the museum doesn’t endorse them.
- Object number
- 1942.9.16
- Credit
- Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington
- Type
- Painting
- Licence
- CC0 1.0 Universal
- Museum record
- See it on the museum’s site
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