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拍品专文
John Smith, who was the first to publish this painting in the 1842 Supplement to his multi-volume Catalogue Raisonné, effusively described it as 'an example of the highest excellence, offering a rich display of the golden hues and magic tints of this painter’s unrivalled palette’ (loc. cit.). Upon its appearance at auction thirty-four years later, The Times (5 June 1876, p. 12) praised the ‘beautiful effect of early morning.’ A warm afternoon light casts long shadows on the path, creating a contre-jour that intensifies the sense of depth as the landscape recedes into the silvery blues in the background. The masterful use of light and bright, varied palette exemplifies the visual vocabulary for which Cuyp is most known today.
Cuyp likely began his formal training in the workshop of his father, for whom he painted the landscape backgrounds of portraits (see Reiss, loc. cit., nos. 16-17). One such collaboration, dated 1641, now in the Israel Museum of Art, Jerusalem, was in the same collection as the present painting in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, that of Alphonse de Rothschild at Ferrières near Paris (fig. 1). Even in these earliest works, Cuyp’s interest in lighting effects is visible in the delicate plays of light in the clouds and strong shadows cast in the foreground. His early, independent landscapes follow the example of Jan van Goyen, incorporating a monochrome palette and taking special interest in the effects of light on water. It wasn’t until the mid-1640s, however, that Cuyp fell under the influence of the Dutch Italianate landscape painters. Cuyp appears not to have traveled to Italy. Instead, he borrowed the suffusing Italianate light from the landscapes of artists like Herman van Swanevelt and Jan Both and married it to traditional Dutch subjects. Cuyp constructed his mature landscapes like the present painting from a relatively low vantage point, creating a sense of grandeur as the landscape unfolds and recedes into lush rolling hills bathed in a misty haze. Such views served as visual manifestations of the contemporary idea which held that the Dutch Republic was experiencing an idyllic age where man and nature exist in harmony.
This little-known painting has largely been out of view to contemporary scholars, which may in part account for questions about its attribution in the second half of the twentieth century. While Smith (1842), Waagen (1854) and Hofstede de Groot (1909) all published the painting as autograph in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in 1975 Stephen Reiss (who was not able to see the painting) speculated that this painting could instead be by a follower of Cuyp, as it is unusually small for a work on canvas by Cuyp and shares features with a more expansive landscape by the artist at Waddesdon (fig. 2).
At the time of his 1992 dissertation on the artist, Alan Chong had not been able to see the painting and assigned it to doubtful attributions to Cuyp (loc. cit.), an opinion he has since revised having had the opportunity to study the painting at firsthand on two occasions, first in 1999 and again in 2023. In his entry on the painting for his forthcoming Cuyp catalogue raisonné, Chong has noted in particular that the ‘layering of translucent pigments is fully convincing as the artist’s work, as is the quickly rendered features of the rider’. Chong dates the painting to between 1653 and 1658, citing the sloping cliff and river view in the distance, which are based on the sketches Cuyp made of the Rhineland around Elten and Kleve in 1653. One such drawing (Duits collection, London, of which an eighteenth-century copy exists in Frankfurt) provided the general inspiration for this composition. Chong further notes that the artist’s use of light paint in the signature resembles that found in other paintings that can be dated to this time, including the Pompe van Meerdervoort equestrian portrait in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, executed around 1653. The painting’s unusual, almost square format suggests it may have been intended to be hung over a door, much like a painting in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (inv. no. SK-A-78).
Cuyp’s paintings found particular currency with Dordrecht’s upper and middle classes in the seventeenth century. However, it wasn’t until the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that his work gained international appeal, especially among wealthy, landed English collectors of the period. This painting’s first recorded owner was the restorer and dealer Thomas B. Brown, who, according to Smith, sold it to Edmund Foster in 1839 (loc. cit.). The painting descended by descent in the family until its sale at Christie’s in 1876, where it was acquired on behalf of Baron Alphonse James de Rothschild along with a view of Nijmegen from the east (see Aelbert Cuyp, 2001, no. 34) and has remained in the family’s possession until the present day. The Rothschild family’s unparalleled interest in Cuyp, evidenced by the collecting activities of both the French and English branches of the family, has led Chong to suggest that ‘no other family seems to have been so enamored of the painter’.
We are grateful to Dr. Alan Chong for his assistance cataloguing this lot.
Cuyp likely began his formal training in the workshop of his father, for whom he painted the landscape backgrounds of portraits (see Reiss, loc. cit., nos. 16-17). One such collaboration, dated 1641, now in the Israel Museum of Art, Jerusalem, was in the same collection as the present painting in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, that of Alphonse de Rothschild at Ferrières near Paris (fig. 1). Even in these earliest works, Cuyp’s interest in lighting effects is visible in the delicate plays of light in the clouds and strong shadows cast in the foreground. His early, independent landscapes follow the example of Jan van Goyen, incorporating a monochrome palette and taking special interest in the effects of light on water. It wasn’t until the mid-1640s, however, that Cuyp fell under the influence of the Dutch Italianate landscape painters. Cuyp appears not to have traveled to Italy. Instead, he borrowed the suffusing Italianate light from the landscapes of artists like Herman van Swanevelt and Jan Both and married it to traditional Dutch subjects. Cuyp constructed his mature landscapes like the present painting from a relatively low vantage point, creating a sense of grandeur as the landscape unfolds and recedes into lush rolling hills bathed in a misty haze. Such views served as visual manifestations of the contemporary idea which held that the Dutch Republic was experiencing an idyllic age where man and nature exist in harmony.
This little-known painting has largely been out of view to contemporary scholars, which may in part account for questions about its attribution in the second half of the twentieth century. While Smith (1842), Waagen (1854) and Hofstede de Groot (1909) all published the painting as autograph in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in 1975 Stephen Reiss (who was not able to see the painting) speculated that this painting could instead be by a follower of Cuyp, as it is unusually small for a work on canvas by Cuyp and shares features with a more expansive landscape by the artist at Waddesdon (fig. 2).
At the time of his 1992 dissertation on the artist, Alan Chong had not been able to see the painting and assigned it to doubtful attributions to Cuyp (loc. cit.), an opinion he has since revised having had the opportunity to study the painting at firsthand on two occasions, first in 1999 and again in 2023. In his entry on the painting for his forthcoming Cuyp catalogue raisonné, Chong has noted in particular that the ‘layering of translucent pigments is fully convincing as the artist’s work, as is the quickly rendered features of the rider’. Chong dates the painting to between 1653 and 1658, citing the sloping cliff and river view in the distance, which are based on the sketches Cuyp made of the Rhineland around Elten and Kleve in 1653. One such drawing (Duits collection, London, of which an eighteenth-century copy exists in Frankfurt) provided the general inspiration for this composition. Chong further notes that the artist’s use of light paint in the signature resembles that found in other paintings that can be dated to this time, including the Pompe van Meerdervoort equestrian portrait in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, executed around 1653. The painting’s unusual, almost square format suggests it may have been intended to be hung over a door, much like a painting in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (inv. no. SK-A-78).
Cuyp’s paintings found particular currency with Dordrecht’s upper and middle classes in the seventeenth century. However, it wasn’t until the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that his work gained international appeal, especially among wealthy, landed English collectors of the period. This painting’s first recorded owner was the restorer and dealer Thomas B. Brown, who, according to Smith, sold it to Edmund Foster in 1839 (loc. cit.). The painting descended by descent in the family until its sale at Christie’s in 1876, where it was acquired on behalf of Baron Alphonse James de Rothschild along with a view of Nijmegen from the east (see Aelbert Cuyp, 2001, no. 34) and has remained in the family’s possession until the present day. The Rothschild family’s unparalleled interest in Cuyp, evidenced by the collecting activities of both the French and English branches of the family, has led Chong to suggest that ‘no other family seems to have been so enamored of the painter’.
We are grateful to Dr. Alan Chong for his assistance cataloguing this lot.