River Landscape near Nijmegen with Riders Watering their Horses

c. 1653 - 1657

Object data

oil on canvas

support: height 128.7 cm × width 227.8 cm
outer size: depth 10 cm (support incl. frame)

Inscriptions

signature, bottom centre: A. cùÿp . .

Technical notes

Support The plain-weave canvas has been wax-resin lined. All tacking edges have been preserved. Cusping is visible at the top and bottom. Judging by the crack pattern along the top and left edges the bars of the original strainer were 5-6 cm wide.
Preparatory layers The single, light and warm yellow-brownish ground extends over the tacking edges. It contains white, black, brown, orange and a few large brown pigment particles.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends over the tacking edges. A first lay-in was executed in dark paint and the composition was largely built up from the back to the front, leaving reserves for the main elements in the foreground. The dark lay-in can still be seen in altered areas, mainly along the contours of the figures’ heads and around the horses’ legs. Almost all the reserves were very carefully closed. The handling of the brush is noticeable everywhere, but as the paints were applied wet in wet and fluidly there is not much texture. The amount of whites or ochres in the opaque paints increases from the front to the back, heightening the sense of depth. A yellowish glaze was placed over the sky.
Willem de Ridder, 2022

Scientific examination and reports

technical report: W. de Ridder, RMA, 25 January 2000
paint samples: A. Wallert, RMA, nos. 100/1-6 (nos. 100/2-6 PLM, 100/2 XRD, 100/6 XRD), 20 August 2002
paint samples: W. de Ridder, RMA, nos. SK-A-4118/1-2, 21 September 2010
infrared photography: W. de Ridder, RMA, 21 September 2010
technical report: W. de Ridder, RMA, 21 September 2010

Condition

Good. The paint surface is slightly abraded throughout, as is the yellowish glaze over the sky. Several areas where the glaze was broken up have been retouched. The landscape has a slight whitish haze throughout. The bright red used for the clothes of several of the figures is partly discoloured and has turned a brownish grey.

Conservation

H.H. Mertens, 1966: canvas lined and placed on a new stretcher; cleaned, filled and retouched
W. de Ridder, 2000: complete restoration

Provenance

…; sale, Jacob Odon (†), Amsterdam (P. van der Schley et al.), 6 September 1784, no. 51 (‘In dit capitaal Landschap ziet men ter rechterzyde op de voorgrond, drie rustende Koeijen en een staande, ter zyde derzelve een staande Veehoeder met een Hond, rustende op zyn Stok; op de voorgrond voor derzelve zyn twee Heeren te Paard aan een Rivier, waar uit een der Paarden staat te drinken, en ter linkerzyde eenige zwemmende Eenden, en ter zelve zyde over de Rivier een aangenaam Landgezigt van Kreupelbosschen en Valleyen, en in het Verschiet het hoog blaauw Gebergte; ter rechterzyde op de tweede grond staat tegens het hoog Gebergte een Herberg, en voor dezelve een Postkar met eenige Passagiers, ter zyde deeze Herberg een Boere Stulp, en in het Verschiet een Dorpgezigt. Op Doek, hoog 50, breed 87 duim [128.5 x 223.5 cm]’), fl. 380, to Coclair;¹...; the dealer Noel Joseph Desenfans (1745-1807), London, c. 1795;² from whom, 350 gns, probably to Joseph Martin († 1828), Ham Court, Upton-on-Severn, Worcestershire, c. 1796;³ his son, John Joseph Martin (1790-1873), with Ham Court; recorded in his collection, 1842, 1850, 1854;⁴ his nephew, George Edward Martin (1829-1905), with Ham Court; recorded in his collection, 1870, 1880;⁵…; collection Baron Alfred de Rothschild (1842-1918), London and Halton House, Buckinghamshire, early 20th century;⁶ his nephew, Lionel Nathan de Rothschild (1882-1942), with Halton House, 1918;⁷ transferred to his estate, Exbury, Hampshire, 1920s;⁸ his son, Edmund Leopold de Rothschild (1916-2009), with the Exbury estate, 1942;⁹ from whom, £192,500, to the museum, through the mediation of the dealer Geoffrey Agnew, with the support of the Dutch Government, the Vereniging Rembrandt, the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds and the Fotocommissie, 1965

Object number: SK-A-4118

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the State of the Netherlands, the Vereniging Rembrandt and the Stichting tot Bevordering van de Belangen van het Rijksmuseum

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 1639,¹⁰ but there are pictures of 1641 and 1645 on which he collaborated with his father.¹¹ 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 1641.¹²

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 1655.¹³

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,¹⁴ 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

The purchase of this river landscape in 1965 fulfilled one of the Rijksmuseum’s long-standing wishes. Almost all the good Cuyps went to England in the eighteenth century, but now one of them, and a masterpiece at that, had been brought back. Both Smith in 1842 and Waagen in 1854 regarded it as one of the very finest works from the artist’s best period.¹⁵ Judging by a small sketch in an exhibition catalogue of 1850, the Rijksmuseum had it in its sights at an early date.¹⁶ The painting contains many distinctive and peerless features of Aelbert Cuyp’s late pictures from the 1650s: a cool blue sky, the edges of the clouds lit up by the sunlight, reflections in the unruffled surface of the water, the warm glow of the setting sun that casts long shadows on the golden brown land, an Arcadian panorama populated with horsemen, herders and animals.

The painting’s return to the Netherlands immediately sparked off speculation about the location of the scene. The initial suggestion was that it was the Wageningse Berg in the east of the country, with the Grebbeberg hill in the background, but the church spire and the ruin could not be tied in with the village in that area.¹⁷ It certainly is a real spot, for there are two drawings by Cuyp of much the same landscape and topographical elements.¹⁸ In the end it was Gorissen, an art historian in Cleves, who came up with the right identification.¹⁹ After comparison with drawings by Hendrik Hoogers and Barend Cornelis Koekkoek he decided that the setting was further south and east, near Nijmegen, and remarkably enough that is precisely what Smith had conjectured back in 1842.²⁰

On the left of Cuyp’s scene is Wyler Lake, an old arm of the Rhine, and on the right is Duivelsberg hill, which is part of the lateral moraine running east from Nijmegen. The ruin on the left is Kranenburg Castle.²¹ In the centre is the spire of the Sint-Johannes de Doperkerk in the hamlet of Wyler, and looming up in the background is the range of hills near Cleves. Gorissen even recognized the farm in the foreground as the Op Gen Start manor.²² There was also a fourteenth-century watermill here called ‘Ten Stert’ which remained in use until the nineteenth century.²³ It was fed by the Wylerberg Brook – also Philosophers’ Brook –, the last stretch of which can be seen in the right foreground of Cuyp’s picture before it entered Wyler Lake. Although the topographical elements are reasonably accurate, Cuyp did cram them closer together. In reality, Kranenburg, Wyler and the Cleves hills are much further apart and cannot be seen in such detail from this spot. Gorissen therefore believed that Cuyp must have used a telescope, but it is equally possible that he brought the background nearer for aesthetic reasons.

The idyllic landscape is dominated by two travellers who are watering their horses under the watchful gaze of a young herdsman. The one on the right is wearing a kazak or riding-coat, which was an article of clothing favoured by the aristocracy.²⁴ His elegant attire and hairstyle already identify him as a member of the wealthy classes. The man beside him is a soldier wearing a cuirass, sash and sword.²⁵

A terminus ante quem for Cuyp’s journey to the region around Cleves is 1652. His drawings of the city include the Raventurm tower, which was demolished in November 1652 after it had collapsed earlier that year.²⁶ According to Van Gelder and Jost, other topographical details in those sheets indicate that the trip could not have been made before 1651, but they fail to say which elements.²⁷ Various dates ranging from 1652 to 1657 and even later have been proposed for the Rijksmuseum picture.²⁸ Neither Cuyp’s stylistic evolution nor the costumes of the figures leave a more accurate clue. He barely painted after his marriage, if at all, which rules out an execution after 1658. Around 1652, the possible year of he journey to Cleves, Cuyp carried out several major portrait commissions.²⁹ This makes it likely that the present canvas was made between roughly 1653 and 1657.

Erlend de Groot, 2022

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

J. Smith, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish and French Painters, IX, London 1842, pp. 659-60, no. 35; G.F. Waagen, Treasures of Art in Great Britain: Being an Account of the Chief Collections of Paintings, Drawings, Sculptures, Illuminated MSS., &c. &c.,, III, London 1854, p. 224; C. Hofstede de Groot, Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, II, Esslingen/Paris 1908, p. 133, no. 458; C.J. de Bruyn Kops, ‘Kanttekeningen bij het nieuw verworven landschap van Aelbert Cuyp: En enige bijzonderheden over de waardering en export van zijn werk in het verleden’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 13 (1965), pp. 161-76; H. Dattenberg, Niederrheinansichten höllandischer Künstler des 17. Jahrhunderts, Düsseldorf 1967, pp. 64-66; F. Gorissen, ‘Aelbert Cuyp: Am Wyler Meer’, Kalender für das Klever Land auf das Jahr 1967 (unpag.); D.G. Burnett, ‘Landscapes of Aelbert Cuyp’, Apollo 89 (1969), pp. 372-80, esp. pp. 377-79; S. Reiss, Aelbert Cuyp, London 1975, p. 182, no. 139; 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. 96-97, no. 34; A. Chong, Aelbert Cuyp and the Meaning of Landscape, diss. New York University 1992, pp. 423-24, no. 169; Rüger in A.K. Wheelock Jr (ed.), Aelbert Cuyp, exh. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art)/London (The National Gallery)/Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 2001-02, pp. 178-79; W.T. Kloek, Aelbert Cuyp: Land, Water, Light, Amsterdam 2002, pp. 37-39

Collection catalogues

1976, p. 183, no. A 4118

Citation

Erlend de Groot, 2022, 'Aelbert Cuyp, River Landscape near Nijmegen with Riders Watering their Horses, c. 1653 - 1657', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8331

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