Mountainous Landscape with the Ruins of a Castle

c. 1642 - c. 1645

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 66.7 cm × width 91 cm × thickness 1.5 cm (support incl. protective backboard)
outer size: depth 9 cm (support incl. frame)

Inscriptions

signature, lower left: A cúÿp.

Technical notes

Support The panel consists of three horizontally grained oak planks (21.8, 27.2 and 17.7 cm), approx. 1 cm thick. An oak strip (approx. 2 cm) was glued to the bottom at a later date. The reverse is bevelled on the left and right and has regular saw marks. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1626. The panel could have been ready for use by 1637, but a date in or after 1643 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The single, thin, somewhat transparent off-white ground extends up to the edges of the support. It contains some fine earth pigments and a few bright orange pigment particles.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the edges of the support. A loose first lay-in was done with transparent brownish paint to define shapes and tonal values. The composition was efficiently built up from the back to the front, leaving reserves for most of the elements, including almost all the small figures and the animals. The brownish lay-in has remained visible at the edges of some reserves and in the deeply shadowed areas, and shows through in altered areas where it was not precisely followed, such as the flock of sheep and the tower. Even the ground and the panel itself can be glimpsed in some places. The relatively thick and opaque paints were applied wet in wet. The execution is very loose and lively and lacks finer details, as can be seen in the heads of the shepherds, for example, which consist of blobs of colour. The sense of depth was heightened by the thickly and sharply rendered figures and greenery in the foreground. The paint layers are rather smooth, except for the sky, the highlights and the more strongly lit areas, where the underlying paint was vigorously pushed away with the top of the brush.
Willem de Ridder, 2022

Scientific examination and reports

technical report: M. van de Laar, RMA, 6 December 2000
dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 15 December 2000
dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 15 February 2002
paint samples: A. Wallert, RMA, nos. 100/7-8, 20 August 2002
paint samples: W. de Ridder, RMA, nos. SK-A-77/1-2, 31 March 2010
infrared photography: W. de Ridder, RMA, 29 April 2010
technical report: W. de Ridder, RMA, 29 April 2010

Literature scientific examination and reports

M. Spring, ‘Pigments and Color Change in the Paintings of Aelbert Cuyp’, in A.K. Wheelock Jr (ed.), Aelbert Cuyp, exh. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art)/London (The National Gallery)/Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 2001-02, pp. 65-73

Condition

Good. The upper join shows up clearly, as it is not perfectly levelled, but appears stable. Some of the retouchings covering it are slightly discoloured. The paint layer shows degradation or whitish efflorescence in most of the greenery in the foreground. The varnish on some of the retouchings has turned matte.

Conservation

M. van de Laar, 2000: complete restoration

Provenance

…; collection Johannes Rombouts (1772-1850), Dordrecht;¹ his nephew, Leendert Dupper Willemsz (1799-1870), Dordrecht, 1850;² by whom bequeathed to the museum, as Frans Hals, with 63 other paintings, 12 April 1870³

Object number: SK-A-77

Credit line: Dupper Wzn. Bequest, Dordrecht

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 1639,⁴ but there are pictures of 1641 and 1645 on which he collaborated with his father.⁵ 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 1641.⁶

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 1655.⁷

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,⁸ 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 is probably one of the earliest landscapes in which Aelbert Cuyp combined the golden blaze of the evening with a bright blue sky and employed the device of backlighting. The sun is shining across the scene from the left background at an angle, turning the foreground figures almost into silhouettes and casting the long shadows of the middle ground shepherds and their sheep to the right. It is considered to be a transitional work in which Cuyp allowed himself to be influenced by Jan Both and abandoned his earlier manner, which was modelled on Jan van Goyen.⁹ It is usually placed between 1645 and 1650 for that reason,¹⁰ but a slightly earlier origin would be more logical, for the scene lacks the clarity that is a feature of Cuyp’s later paintings, and the staffage is really very small indeed. It is inconceivable that it postdates the well-known Herdsman with Cattle in London, which is considered to be from around 1645.¹¹ The composition of that picture is less forced and the figures are monumental. The panel in the Rijksmuseum is closer to the View of Rhenen with Travellers, which is almost exactly the same size at 67.5 x 90.5 cm and has a rather similar design and colour scheme.¹² Both were probably made at roughly the same time.

Cuyp borrowed both the atmosphere created by the setting sun and the landscape itself from the Dutch Italianates. Chong has stated that towards the background it derives directly from Jan Both.¹³ New motifs that Cuyp introduced in the Rijksmuseum picture include the ruins and the sheltered seating area, but the steep cliffs and herdsmen with their animals are already familiar from work of the period 1639-40.¹⁴ The way in which the present painting is framed, with a dark strip of land in the foreground that lightens as it follows the sandy path as far as the trees by the ruin, is still closely related to the compositions from the very beginning of Cuyp’s career. The earliest possible date is around 1642-43, when Jan Both had returned from Italy and was first in a position to influence Cuyp. This is confirmed by the dendrochronology, which indicates that the panel would probably have been ready for use in or after 1643.¹⁵

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, p. 652, no. 11; C. Hofstede de Groot, Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, II, Esslingen/Paris 1908, pp. 116-17, no. 406; W. Stechow, ‘Significant Dates on Some Seventeenth Century Dutch Landscape Paintings’, Oud Holland 75 (1960), pp. 79-92, esp. pp. 87-88; S. Reiss, Aelbert Cuyp, London 1975, p. 70, no. 37; 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. 76-77, no. 24; A. Chong, Aelbert Cuyp and the Meaning of Landscape, diss. New York University 1992, p. 320, no. 75, with earlier literature

Collection catalogues

1885, p. 10, no. 63; 1903, p. 78, no. 744; 1934, p. 77, no. 744; 1960, p. 79, no. 744; 1976, p. 183, no. A 77

Citation

Erlend de Groot, 2022, 'Aelbert Cuyp, Mountainous Landscape with the Ruins of a Castle, c. 1642 - c. 1645', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8193

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