View of Dordrecht at Sunset

c. 1700 - c. 1842

Object data

oil on canvas

support: height 67 cm × width 83.7 cm
outer size: depth 9 cm (support incl. frame)

Technical notes

Support The plain-weave canvas has been wax-resin lined. All tacking edges have been removed. Cusping is clearly visible at the bottom, less so at the top and only vaguely on the left.
Preparatory layers The single, solid, fine, off-white ground extends up to the current edges of the support.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the current edges of the support. The composition was built up from the back to the front in no more than one or two layers, without undermodelling and reserves. Thick and opaque paints were applied wet in wet and fluidly. Dabs of the brush depict the reflection in the water as well as several details, such as the rigging and mast of the big ship on the right. Texture of brushwork is visible mainly in light areas, for example in the sunlit parts of the ships and buildings, and in the highlights in the sky. The coarseness of the canvas plays a distinct role in the final painting, since some strokes of paint only attached themselves to the higher points.
Willem de Ridder, 2022

Scientific examination and reports

infrared photography: W. de Ridder, RMA, 21 March 2010
paint samples: W. de Ridder, RMA, nos. SK-C-123/1-2, 31 March 2010
technical report: W. de Ridder, RMA, 31 March 2010

Condition

Good. The paint surface has a somewhat flattened appearance and the canvas weave is visible, both possibly a result of lining. The paint surface is abraded throughout, but most noticeably in the darkest colours. There is a dark residue of older varnish and/or dirt in the lower parts of the paint layer. The varnish has yellowed and is slightly uneven.

Conservation

F. Leedham: canvas wax-resin lined (c. 1830-60, precise date unknown)

Provenance

…;¹ from Johannes Albertus Brondgeest, fl. 4,000, to Adriaan van der Hoop (1778-1854), Amsterdam, 1849;² by whom bequeathed to the City of Amsterdam, with 223 other paintings, 1854;³ on loan from the City of Amsterdam to the museum since 30 June 1885⁴

Object number: SK-C-123

Credit line: On loan from the City of Amsterdam (A. van der Hoop Bequest)

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 1639,⁵ but there are pictures of 1641 and 1645 on which he collaborated with his father.⁶ 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 1641.⁷

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 1655.⁸

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,⁹ 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 a copy after the left half of Aelbert Cuyp’s View of Dordrecht from the North.¹⁰ The original, which was painted around the mid-1650s, spent a long time as two separate parts that were not rejoined until 1841-42.¹¹ That establishes a terminus ante quem for this work. It was probably made in the eighteenth century in England, as that is where it comes from and where the original has been since then.¹²

Although doubts about the authenticity of the present work were already being aired in 1855 in the earliest catalogue of the Museum van der Hoop, it continued to be regarded as one of Cuyp’s finest paintings for the remainder of the century.¹³ In 1858 Thoré, for example, considered it as authentic ‘without any doubt’, and in the later catalogues of the Van der Hoop museum it was also presented as genuine.¹⁴ At the end of the century Hofstede de Groot saw the original View of Dordrecht from the North in the London collection of the Englishman Captain Holford. He concluded that the Rijksmuseum’s picture had to have been copied after it.¹⁵ That was not generally accepted, though, and a fierce argument broke out over the work. The fact that the Netherlands no longer had a first-rate Cuyp undoubtedly contributed to the uproar. Six put up particularly stiff resistance to the idea that the Rijksmuseum piece was a copy.¹⁶ He considered it too good for that, and thought that it had to be an autograph replica. However, once Bredius had sided with Hofstede de Groot the copy theory gradually gained the upper hand.¹⁷ It is now generally acknowledged that it is a very skilful but non-contemporary painting made after one half of a Cuyp masterpiece. It is on canvas with a remarkably coarse weave for the eighteenth century that makes it look much older.

Erlend de Groot, 2022

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

E.-J.-T. Thoré (pseud. W. Bürger), Musées de la Hollande, II, Paris 1860, pp. 144-45 (as Aelbert Cuyp); C. Hofstede de Groot, ‘Kritische opmerkingen omtrent eenige schilderijen in ’s Rijksmuseum’, Oud Holland 17 (1899), pp. 163-70, esp. p. 163; A. Bredius, ‘Verzameling Van der Hoop: Albert Cuyp’s Gezicht op Dordrecht’, Bulletin Koninklijke Nederlandse Oudheidkundige Bond 1 (1899-1900), pp. 201-05; J. Six, ‘Verzameling Van der Hoop: Albert Cuyp’s Gezicht op Dordrecht’, Bulletin Koninklijke Nederlandse Oudheidkundige Bond 1 (1899-1900), pp. 154-57 (as Aelbert Cuyp); C. Hofstede de Groot, Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, II, Esslingen/Paris 1908, p. 56; J.G. Van Gelder and I. Jost, ‘Doorzagen op Aelbert Cuyp’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 23 (1972), pp. 223-39, esp. pp. 223, 236-37, note 6; A. Chong, Aelbert Cuyp and the Meaning of Landscape, diss., New York University 1992, pp. 49, 416, no. 163c

Collection catalogues

1887, p. 33, no. 256 (as Aelbert Cuyp); 1903, p. 78, no. 747 (as Aelbert Cuyp); 1976, p. 185, no. C-123

Citation

Erlend de Groot, 2022, 'copy after Aelbert Cuyp, View of Dordrecht at Sunset, c. 1700 - c. 1842', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8195

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