Signboard of a Wineshop, with Tasting the Wine on one side and Barreling the Wine on the other

c. 1650 - c. 1655

Object data

oil on copper

support: height 45.5 cm × width 52 cm

Inscriptions

signature: cuyp

Technical notes

Support The copper plate has coarse hammer marks on both sides. It has four irregularly shaped eyes: two big ones at the top and two smaller ones welded to one side.
Preparatory layers A fairly dark, yellowish-brown ground is visible to the naked eye.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers Both compositions were built up from the back to the front, wet in wet. In the outdoor scene alone the sky was allowed to dry before the masts of the ship were added. Reserves were solely used for the two foreground figures in the lower left corner of that scene. The dark ground is visible in both compositions and was used for shadowed areas, especially in the shop scene. In many places the paint was applied with bold and vigorous brushstrokes, and a stiff brush top was used to create a strong and coarse texture, especially in most flesh colours and in the skies. A few changes are visible to the naked eye: in the outdoor scene the stretched arm of the man on the stone landing was shifted, as was the hat of the man in black on the quay, and in the shop scene the position of the hat was also slightly altered.
Willem de Ridder, 2022

Scientific examination and reports

infrared photography: W. de Ridder, RMA, 17 May 2010
technical report: W. de Ridder, RMA, 17 May 2010

Condition

Fair. Both sides have several small paint losses throughout, and the paint surface is abraded and has some discoloured retouchings. The varnish has yellowed severely and has turned dull. It has lost its saturation and several light scratches are visible. A dark residue of varnish has piled up in the lowest parts of the paint layers, especially in the lighter areas.

Provenance

…; from the dealer Charles Sedelmayer, Paris, fr. 1,500, to the museum, as Aelbert Cuyp, March 1888;¹ on loan to Huis Van Gijn, Dordrecht, since 1959

Object number: SK-A-1457

The artist

Aelbert Cuyp (Dordrecht 1620 - Dordrecht 1691)

Aelbert Cuyp was baptized in the Reformed Augustijnenkerk in Dordrecht in October 1620 and was a scion of an artistic family. His grandfather Gerrit Gerritsz was a glass painter from Limburg who settled in Dordrecht before 1585, and his father Jacob Gerritsz was one of the city’s leading portraitists in the first half of the seventeenth century. The latter trained his own half-brother Benjamin and probably taught Aelbert as well.

Aelbert Cuyp could turn his hand to pretty well every genre – cityscapes, landscapes and, to a lesser extent, biblical and mythological subjects and portraits. His earliest independent landscapes date from 1639,² but there are pictures of 1641 and 1645 on which he collaborated with his father.³ Aelbert took care of the scenery and Jacob did the portraits in them. Drawn sights of The Hague, Utrecht, Amersfoort and Rhenen show that he went on one or more trips through the provinces of Holland, Utrecht and Gelderland, and one of those works was used for another painting that he made with his father in 1641.⁴

Aelbert Cuyp’s landscapes from the early 1640s, only a few of which bear the year of execution, are clearly influenced by Jan van Goyen. Around 1645 he began taking an interest in the Dutch Italianate painters, chiefly Jan Both, who had returned from Italy in 1642. Initially this led to his creation of imaginary Arcadian spaces drenched in a southern light, but after about 1650 his depictions of Dutch city and countryside also took on the golden brown glow of the Italian evening sun, in contrast to a cool sky. There is some uncertainty about the precise evolution of these works, because none of them are dated after 1645 – unlike a few portraits that Cuyp made in the 1650s, the last of them in 1655.⁵

Around 1651-52 Cuyp went on a journey to Nijmegen and from there to Elten and Cleves in Germany. The record of this can be seen in a whole series of sketches and paintings of the region. In the 1650s Cuyp was commissioned by a number of leading families in Dordrecht, and in 1658 he himself became a member of the elite through his marriage to Cornelia Boschman, the widow of one of the regents. Although her wills of 1659, 1664 and 1679 mention works that could have been made after that date, it seems that Cuyp abandoned art when he married. Houbraken says that he taught Barent van Calraat in the 1660s and modernized an earlier picture of his in that period,⁶ but there are no paintings that must have been executed after the 1650s. Cuyp now began serving in a variety of administrative and ecclesiastical posts. In 1659 he was elected deacon of the Reformed Church, a function that he also carried out from 1667 to 1672, when he was appointed an elder. In 1673, 1675 and 1676 he was a governor of the Plague House, and from 1680 to 1682 a member of the High Court of Justice of South Holland. In 1689, two years before his death, Cuyp was taxed 210 guilders, which meant that he had a considerable fortune of 42,000 guilders.

Erlend de Groot, 2022

References
M. Balen, Beschryvinge der stad Dordrecht […], Dordrecht 1677, pp. 186, 909; A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, I, Amsterdam 1718, pp. 248-49; R. van Eynden and A. van der Willigen, Geschiedenis der vaderlandsche schilderkunst, sedert de helft der XVIII eeuw, I, Haarlem 1816, pp. 381-85; C. Kramm, De levens en werken der Hollandsche en Vlaamsche kunstschilders, beeldhouwers, graveurs en bouwmeesters: Van den vroegsten tot op onzen tijd, VI, Amsterdam 1864, pp. 308-10; G.H. Veth, ‘Over de Cuyps en Bol’, De Nederlandsche Spectator 29 (1884), pp. 117-18; G.H. Veth, ‘Aelbert Cuyp, Jacob Gerritsz Cuyp en Benjamin Cuyp’, Oud Holland 2 (1884), pp. 233-90, esp. pp. 256-90 (documents); G.H. Veth, ‘Aanteekeningen omtrent eenige Dordrechtsche schilders, XIV: Aelbert Cuyp’, Oud Holland 6 (1888), pp. 142-48; Lilienfeld in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, VIII, Leipzig 1913, pp. 227-30; A. Chong, Aelbert Cuyp and the Meaning of Landscape, diss. New York University 1992, pp. 548-67 (documents); Seelig in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, XXIII, Munich/Leipzig 1999, p. 235

Entry

This thick, coarsely beaten copper plate was very probably intended as a wine merchant’s signboard.⁷ There are metal eyes on the top and on one side to which it could be attached to a support with hooks or rope. Both its faces are painted. One shows a soldier and a civilian with their dog on a quay as they watch the delivery and coopering of wine barrels. On the other the two figures reappear in an interior which is identified as a wine merchant’s by the barrels in the foreground and background. The soldier sits slumped in a chair with the dog at his feet while his companion is holding a prunted glass up to the light, probably in order to check the clarity of the wine.

The scenes are coarsely painted. The sky is broadly brushed and the figures are hardly worked up at all. They were probably intended to be seen from a distance. One of the barrels was apparently inscribed ‘cuyp’ originally,⁸ and it is on that basis that the signboard was attributed to Aelbert Cuyp. However, no signature was found during the last technical examination. It may have been a fake that was removed when the picture was restored, but that is not documented. In any event, there are no compelling reasons to assume that this is a work by Cuyp.⁹ The figures are vaguely reminiscent of his paintings, where the combination of a soldier and a civilian is often found, but here they are more coarsely executed than usual.¹⁰ It is not completely beyond the bounds of possibility that this was some sort of commission, but the sky, especially, with its seemingly stencilled clouds, is really very uncharacteristic of Cuyp.¹¹ For the time being it therefore seems reasonable to speak of an anonymous artist who was active around the middle of the seventeenth century, judging by the figures’ dress.

Erlend de Groot, 2022

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

E. Michel, ‘Une famille d’artistes hollandais: Les Cuyps’, Gazette des Beaux-Arts 34 (1892), pp. 5-23, 107-17, 224-38, esp. pp. 232-33; C. Hofstede de Groot, Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, II, Esslingen/Paris 1908, p. 18, no. 38 (as Aelbert Cuyp); De Groot in J.G. van Gelder et al., Aelbert Cuyp en zijn familie: Schilders te Dordrecht, exh. cat. Dordrecht (Dordrechts Museum) 1977-78, pp. 60-61, no. 16 (as Aelbert Cuyp); A. Chong, Aelbert Cuyp and the Meaning of Landscape, diss. New York University 1992, p. 494, no. C143

Collection catalogues

1903, p. 79, no. 749 (as Aelbert Cuyp); 1976, p. 184, no. A 1457 (as Aelbert Cuyp)

Citation

Erlend de Groot, 2022, 'circle of Aelbert Cuyp, Signboard of a Wineshop, with Tasting the Wine on one side and Barreling the Wine on the other, c. 1650 - c. 1655', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.7391

(accessed 16 November 2024 00:25:39).