Aelbert Cuyp
Landscape with Cattle and Milkmaid
c. 1650
One of the leading landscape painters in seventeenth-century Netherlands, Aelbert Cuyp adopted effects of light from Italianate landscape painting to bring a new grandeur to traditional Dutch subjects, including townscapes and scenes of cattle. In this tranquil farm scene bathed in golden light, Cuyp prominently places two cows in the foreground, a subject that generally symbolized prosperity and references the expanding dairy industry in the area around Dordrecht where Cuyp was based. In the distance are a church steeple and windmills, which have been identified with The Hague; Cuyp made sketches while traveling in the countryside and sometimes incorporated them into his paintings. The overall tenor of the painting, which stresses a harmonious relationship between the land and its inhabitants and between the farm and the town in the distance, can be understood in relation to the period of peace and prosperity that followed the 1648 treaty that ended war with Spain and established the Dutch Republic. [Permanent collection label, 2016]
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Artist
Aelbert Cuyp
(Dutch, 1620–1691)
- Title Landscape with Cattle and Milkmaid
- Date c. 1650
- Medium Oil on canvas
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Dimensions
unframed | 46 x 64 3/4 in.
- Credit line University purchase, Parsons Fund, 1947
- Object number WU 3811
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Technique
oil painting
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Work type
painting
Real / Radical / Psychological: The Collection on Display
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 09/09/2016 - 01/15/2017
Studying the Art Object: Materials and Methods
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 08/20/2010 - 01/10/2011
Charles Parsons: Portrait of a St. Louis Collector
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 12/12/1976 - 01/30/1977
Civilization Revisited
Wichita Art Museum (Wichita, Kansas), 12/04/1971 - 01/30/1972
The Age of Rembrandt
Toledo Museum of Art (Toledo, Ohio), 11/26/1966 - 01/08/1967
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Boston, Massachusetts), 01/21/1967 - 03/05/1967
Legion of Honor, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (San Franscisco, California), 10/10/1966 - 11/13/1966
Grands et Petits Maitres Hollandais [verify location & dates]
Musée du Louvre (Paris, France), 01/01/1911 - 01/01/1911
1947
Rosenberg & Stiebel, New York
Inscription Recto, lower left, in brown paint: A. cuyp
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