The Maas at Dordrecht

Aelbert Cuyp

The lasting appeal of Cuyp's masterful depiction of Dordrecht derives from the extraordinary light effects that bring an early summer morning to life and from the dramatic sweep of clouds that enhances the massive scale of the painting.

Dordrecht, situated at the confluence of the Maas and Rhine Rivers, is a mere backdrop to the historical scene on the water. In July 1646 a large Dutch transport fleet carrying 30,000 soldiers and their equipment gathered at Dordrecht in a show of force by the rebel northern provinces—fighting for independence from the Spanish crown—at the onset of the negotiations that would eventually result in the Peace of Münster of 1648.

Crowds jam the quays, bugles and drums sound fanfares, and a shipboard cannon fires a salute. The young officer standing in the small boat wearing a white and red sash—the colors of Dordrecht—likely commissioned Cuyp to paint this historic event. The officer and his brightly clad companion are greeted by a distinguished-looking gentleman and numerous other figures, including a drummer, aboard the larger vessel. On the left, a second rowboat approaches, carrying other dignitaries and a trumpeter who signals their arrival. Most of the ships have their sails raised as though they are about to depart, and fluttering flags suggest the presence of a breeze, yet the overall sense of the scene is one of great calm.

About the Artist

Aelbert Cuyp’s father, Jan Gerritsz, was a successful portrait painter and trained his son to follow in his footsteps. The young Cuyp gained practical experience by painting the landscaped backgrounds of his father’s portrait paintings. He later came to focus exclusively on land- and seascapes, genres in which he not only achieved considerable success but also influenced other painters.

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Artist Information
Aelbert Cuyp (Dutch, 1620 - 1691)

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Painting in the Dutch Golden Age

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Aelbert Cuyp

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Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century

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A fleet of ships gathers in a river lined by trees and buildings in this horizontal painting. The horizon is low, less than a quarter of the way up the composition, and the immense pale blue sky above is filled with clouds with golden tops above dove-gray undersides. The river spans the width of the painting and is congested with boats and ships, many festooned with red, white, and blue flags and banners. The vessels are crowded with people, mostly men wearing hats and black or brown garments. A ship to our right is closest to us and is the largest in the composition. A rowboat has pulled up to the side of the ship, and is occupied by a seated man wearing crimson red and a standing man wearing black. Another man, wearing brown, pulls the rowboat closer to the ship. Amid the densely packed deck over the rowboat, a musician plays a drum while another drinks from a flagon. Ships with unfurled sails, rowboats, and ferries fill the river behind and around the large ship. Churches and buildings are clustered along the riverbank to the left and trees line the river to the right. — Aelbert Cuyp, *The Maas at Dordrecht*, c. 1650, oil on canvas, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, 1940.2.1

Cuyp’s scenes of rural and seafaring life are placid and dignified. His images frequently include a view of the countryside surrounding his native Dordrecht and are infused with a golden, pastoral light, which was probably influenced by the artist Jan Both, a landscape painter from Utrecht. Both had visited Italy and introduced elements inspired by the Italian landscape to northern painters. Cuyp visited Utrecht regularly and probably saw Both’s work there. Cuyp also drew inspiration from his sketching forays around Holland and along the Rhine River. He was known as a religious man, active in the Dutch Reformed Church, and as a person of onbesprokenleven, irreproachable character. In 1650 he married Cornelia Bosman, a wealthy widow. Later in life he painted fewer works, possibly because of greater involvement in church activities or the lack of financial pressures.

More Works by Aelbert Cuyp

A man stands and a woman sits near a herd of seven cows under a light-drenched sky in this horizontal landscape painting. The herd gathers on a grassy rise just beyond some large boulders and twiggy branches. The cows are caramel or copper brown and ivory white. They stand and lie, legs tucked demurely beneath their hulking bodies, facing different directions, their short horns curling like parentheses against the sky. The man stands on our side of the herd with his back to us to the left of center. He holds a tall shepherd’s staff in one hand as he hunches slightly and points with the other, to our right. He wears a high-crowned, wide-brimmed black hat, a crimson-red jacket, black trousers, and black knee-high boots. A knapsack hangs across one shoulder and rests behind his left hip. The woman sits on the far side of the herd so we see her under the man’s raised arm. She looks at him, her face peachy and round under a wide-brimmed straw-colored hat. She wears a white shirt under a robin’s egg-blue dress, and also holds a tall staff upright with both hands. Two more pale-skinned people sit on the ground or on a donkey in the near distance to our right, near the right edge of the canvas. Both wear hats and earth-toned clothing in black, gray, and blue. The donkey stands facing us, its face low, and a pair of baskets are slung across its back. The people and cattle cast long shadows from the setting sun, out of view to our left. The sunset ignites the undersides of the towering, slate-gray clouds with peach and gold against the ice-blue sky. A body of water stretches from beyond the low hill to a distant shore, where stone ruins are outlined on the horizon, which comes about a third of the way up the composition. A flock of six birds and another pair dot the sky.

Works by Aelbert Cuyp in the National Gallery of Art collection

Aelbert Cuyp, Herdsmen Tending Cattle, 1655/1660, oil on canvas, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, 1937.1.59

An elegantly dressed man and woman ride horses toward us and to our right in a landscape with low, rolling hills, stone buildings, and trees in this horizontal painting. The two horses and riders take up the right half of the composition. Both people have pale skin and look at us. The woman has a high forehead, a straight nose, a round face, and curly blond hair falling to her shoulders. She wears a sapphire-blue dress with slashed sleeves to reveal a white garment beneath. Her hat is adorned with blue and white feathers, and she wears a string of pearls around her neck. The legs of her white horse darken to black below the knees, and the bridle is tied with blue bows near the horse’s ears. The sidesaddle sits on a woven, rug-like blanket. Next to her, to our right, the man rides a larger chestnut-brown horse with a white triangle between its eyes. The man looks at us out of the corners of his dark eyes under gathered brows. He has a long, straight nose and is cleanshaven, though a hint of a five o’clock shadow slightly darkens his cleft chin. His light brown hair falls in curls down past his shoulders, and he wears a dark brown coat with voluminous white fabric rippling out above tan-colored gloves. He holds a riding crop in his right hand, on our left, resting against his hip. Near the white horse’s feet, to our left, a dark brown dog with a white nose sniffs at a plant. Behind it, another reddish-brown dog sniffs the ground near the horse’s back hoof. A third dog stands beyond, partially obscured by bushes and plants growing in the lower left corner of the canvas. A man wearing a tall black, wide-brimmed hat and carrying a long staff leads two slender dogs resembling grayhounds on leashes along the path, a little behind the riders. Two more elegantly dressed men ride horses toward us father back on the path. Sand-colored stone buildings, hazy in the distance, are clustered around a squared tower, possibly a bell tower, to our left. The land dips gently to the horizon line in the deep distance. The riders are silhouetted against a swirling slate-blue cloud that fills most of the sky in the top two-thirds of the painting. The sky clears to pale blue to our left and then warms to golden yellow along the horizon, beyond the buildings. The artist signed the painting near the lower left corner: “A. Cuijp.”

Works by Aelbert Cuyp in the National Gallery of Art collection

Aelbert Cuyp, Lady and Gentleman on Horseback, c. 1655, reworked 1660/1665, oil on canvas, Widener Collection, 1942.9.15

Works by Aelbert Cuyp in the National Gallery of Art collection

Aelbert Cuyp, Horsemen and Herdsmen with Cattle, 1655/1660, oil on canvas, Widener Collection, 1942.9.16

Eight cows bathed in warm sunlight stand and lie on a riverbank carpeted in mossy green in this horizontal painting. The cows are amber, ginger, or tawny brown, bone white, or black, and all have short, curving horns. Seven are clustered closely together, at the bottom center of the painting. There, one tawny red cow with a white face looks at or toward us as it lies at the middle of the grouping, legs tucked under her big body. The eighth cow is black with a white face, and lies just to our left of the group. Behind the cows, to our right, a hill rises about halfway up the right side of the composition. Three men meet at the top. One man is on horseback with his back to us, while the other two stand to the right holding tall staffs. They are dressed in sage-green, tan, or peanut-brown tunics and knee-length pants, and they all wear hats. Beyond the cows, the silvery-blue river extends back to a row of low trees in the deep distance on the horizon, which comes about a quarter of the way up the composition. A few sailboats with white sails navigate the waterway. The sky, which takes up about three-quarters of the composition, is filled with puffy white, pale gray, and shell-pink clouds. A shaft of sunlight breaks through the clouds near the top center of the composition and falls toward the men on the hill. Birds flying in a loose band are painted with a few swipes of brown, tiny in the distance. The artist signed the lower right, “A:Cuijp.”

Works by Aelbert Cuyp in the National Gallery of Art collection

Aelbert Cuyp, River Landscape with Cows, 1645/1650, oil on panel, Gift of Family Petschek (Aussig), 1986.70.1

Related Works in the
National Gallery of Art Collection

Painted almost entirely in tones of beige and golden brown, we look across a smooth body of water at a row of buildings around a large church and several windmills scattered across the skyline in this horizontal landscape painting. The horizon comes about a quarter of the way up the painting, and the ice-blue sky above is nearly filled with pink-tinged clouds. Closest to us, a man bends over a container or bundle on a narrow spit of land in the lower left corner. Three boats float close by in the water beyond him. A rowboat at the lower center of the painting is filled with at least ten people, wearing bonnets or hats, dressed in tones of muted teal blue, golden yellow, and smoke gray. An empty, smaller boat is tied to and floats off one end of the rowboat. To our left, beyond the spit of land, a second rowboat is pulled up alongside a shallow boat with sails unfurled. Five people sit or stand in the rowboat as a sixth person is helped from the smaller rowboat up onto the sailboat. At least seven people and perhaps some bundles fill the deck of the sailboat. A bird flies low to the surface of the water nearby. A church with a tall, square tower and the lower buildings around it reflect in the placid water on the distant shore. More boats float along the winding shoreline in the deep distance, and a few more spires, windmills, and stately buildings are silhouetted against the sky. — Jan van Goyen, *View of Dordrecht from the Dordtse Kil*, 1644, oil on panel, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 1978.11.1

Painted in tones of beige, cream white, and pecan brown with hints of shell pink and faint blue, a few sailboats float in a calm body of water with a harbor and a town deep in the distance along the horizon, which comes about a quarter of the way up this painting. Rippling gently across the foreground, the water reflects the pale blue sky and blush pink of clouds above. To our left, two masted ships with sails furled have pulled up alongside each other. A smaller boat sails to our right and a few more are spaced sparsely along the waterway leading to the town. Painted as a dense forest of spiky masts, the harbor in the far distance is full of boats along a town that stretches nearly the width of the panel. Tiny in scale, there are a few windmills and slate-gray towers for churches, town halls, and other buildings. — Abraham de Verwer, *View of Hoorn*, c. 1650, oil on panel, Fund given in honor of Derald Ruttenberg’s Grandchildren, 2008.32.1

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