This broad, panoramic view of a river valley has long been considered one of Cuyp’s most masterful works. The golden light of the late afternoon sun and the moist air in the broad valley soften the landscape, casting a quiet, peaceful spell over the scene. In the foreground two elegant horsemen, whose exotic costumes indicate that they have come from a distant land, pause to discuss their route. Behind them, in the shade of a group of large trees, two shepherds rest amidst their animals. Another herdsman and his cows appear at the left, while a lone rider on a galloping horse in the middle distance is the scene’s only active element.
The pastoral quality of the painting reflects the influence of Dutch artists who had traveled to Italy and brought back images of the Roman campagna. Particularly important was the work of Jan Both (Dutch, 1615/1618 - 1652), who similarly set off views of distant river valleys with elegant trees grouped to one side. Both also favored the contre-jour effects of the late afternoon light and frequently painted long diagonal shadows cast by the setting sun—atmospheric elements particularly apparent in this work. Still, the connections between Cuyp’s pastoral scenes and Both’s Italianate views can be overstated. Peasants with their donkeys pass through Both’s mountainous landscapes, whereas in this work, elegant foreigners ride finely bred steeds through a broad, open landscape. The distinctive character of Cuyp’s travelers indicates that his approach is fundamentally different from Both’s, whose peasants fit comfortably into his landscapes as integral components of the artist’s idealized vision of the Roman campagna. Cuyp’s travelers, on the other hand, do not belong to the land nor do they fit within it. The exotic horsemen provide striking visual accents for the composition, but they also engage the viewer, raising questions about the riders’ identities, their travels, and their destination.
Despite the evocative quality of Cuyp’s pastoral scene, the landscape is based on a real site: the Rhine valley near the towns of Kleve and Kalkar, not far from the Dutch border. The identifying features are two background hills: the Monterberg, the steep-sided hill on the left with twin towers at its summit, and the Eltenberg, surmounted by the partially ruined monastery of Hochelten. These hills, also depicted in other paintings, are recognizable from drawings of these sites that Cuyp made on his trip to this area of the Rhine in about 1651–1652.
Nevertheless, a comparison of Horsemen and Herdsmen with Cattle with these drawings indicates that Cuyp freely interpreted topographic elements in this painting. He depicts the Monterberg as a much higher hill than it is in reality, and the two towers are seen to such advantage only from the opposite viewpoint. Finally, the Monterberg and the Eltenberg do not lie in such close proximity and cannot be seen together in the way that Cuyp has represented them. Given the freedom with which the artist combined these landscape elements, the towns vaguely discernible in the river valley are probably Cuyp’s own creations, intended to suggest the character of this beautiful stretch along the Rhine.
Aside from reusing landscape elements, Cuyp also repeated figures and animal motifs in his paintings. The gray horse, for example, is identical to that in Lady and Gentleman on Horseback, and the galloping horse and rider reappear in Michiel and Cornelis Pompe van Meerdervoort with Their Tutor. Cuyp’s ease with recycling his motifs and the fact that he rarely dated his landscapes make it difficult to establish an exact chronology for his work. Nevertheless, the expansiveness of the panorama; the soft, atmospheric qualities of the river valley, which derive from Cuyp’s broad, planar technique of applying paint; and the elegance of the riders are elements associated with paintings he started in the mid-to-late 1650s. An increasing artificiality of light effects and the introduction in the foreground of twisted saplings and large decorative leaves are other distinctive characteristics of Cuyp’s mature style. This artificiality is particularly striking in this painting, in which diagonal shadows fall across rocks and foliage without any indication of their three-dimensionality. Landscape with Horse Trainers [fig. 1]
[fig. 1] Aelbert Cuyp, Landscape with Horse Trainers, about 1655 (or 1660), oil on canvas, The Toledo Museum of Art, Purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey, 1960.2, which hung as a pendant to the National Gallery picture when the two paintings were together in the Van Slingeland collection in the eighteenth century, stylistically contains similar characteristics.
Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.
April 24, 2014
