Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/779

C U Y P 743 at Dort, in the neighbourhood of which they had a country house, where Albert Cuyp was born and bred. The eldest member of the family who acquired fame was JACOB GERRITSZ CUYP (1575 1 1649), born, it is said, at Dort, and taught by Abraham Bloemaert of Utrecht. It is difficult to find a greater contrast than that which marks the styles of these two paintt rs, one of whom learned to imitate the mannerisms of the French school, whilst the other persistently clung to the sober reality of nature. J. G. Cuyp s pictures are little known, and are therefore said to be scarce. But he produced portraits in various forms, as busts and half-lengths thrown upon plain back-grounds, or groups in rooms, landscapes, and gardens. Solid and clever as an imitator of nature in its ordinary garb, he is always spirited, sometimes rough, but generally plain, and quite as unconscious of the sparkle conspicuous in Fraus Hals as incapable of the concentrated light-effects peculiar to Rembrandt. In portrait busts, of which there are signed examples dated 1624, 1644, 1646, and 1649, in the museums of Berlin, Rotterdam, Marseilles, Vienna, and Metz, his treatment is honest, homely, and true ; his touch and tone firm and natural. In portraying children he is fond of introducing playthings and pets a lamb, a goat, or a roedeer ; and he reproduces animal life with realistic care. In a family scena at the Amsterdam Museum we have likenesses of men, women, boys, and girls, with a cottage and park. In the background is a coach with a pair of horses. These examples alone give us a clue to the influences under which Albert Cuyp grew up, and explain to some extent the direction which his art took as he rose to manhood. ALBERT CUYP (1605-1691), the son of Jacob Gerritsz by Grietche Dierichsdochter (Dierich s daughter), was born at Dort. He married in 1658 Cornelia Bosman, a widow, by whom he had an only daughter. By right of his posses sions at Dordwyck, Cuyp was a vassal of the county of Holland, and privileged to sit in the high court of the province. As a citizen he was sufficiently well known to be placed on the list of those from whom William III., stadtholder of the Netherlands, chose the regency of Dort in 1672. His death, and his burial on the 7th of November 1691 in the church of the Augustines of Dort. are historically proved. It has been said that Albert was the pupil of his father. The scanty evidence of Dutch annalists to this effect seems confirmed by a certain coin cidence in the style and treatment of father and son. It has been likewise stated that Albert was skilled, not only in the production of portraits, landscapes, and herds, but in the representation of still life. His works are supposed to be divisible into such as bear the distinctive marks C. or A. C. in cursive characters, the letters A. C. in Roman capitals, and the name " A. Cuyp " in full. A man of Cuyp s acknowledged talent may have been versatile enough to paint in many different styles. But whether he was as ver satile as some critics of this generation think is a question not quite easy to answer. It is to be observed that pieces assigned to Cuyp representing game, shell-fish, and fruit, and inscribed A. C. in Roman capitals (Rotterdam, Amster dam, and Berlin museums), though cleverly executed, are not in touch or treatment like other pictures of less dubious authenticity, signed either with C. or A. C. or " A. Cuyp " in cursive letters. The panels marked C. and A. C. in cursive are portraits or landscapes, with herds, and interiors of stables or sheds, in which there are cows, horses, and poultry. The subjects and their handling are akin to those which strike us in panels bearing the master s full signature, though characterized, as productions of an artist in the first phase of his progress would naturally be, by tones more uniform, touch more flat, and colour more deep than we find in the delicate and subtle compositions of the painter s later time. Generally speaking the finished examples of Cuyp s middle and final period all bear his full signature. They are all remarkable for harmonies attained by certain combinations of shade in gradations with colours in contraposition. Albert Cuyp, a true child of the Netherlands, does not seem to have wandered much beyond Rotterdam on the one hand or Nimeguen on the other. His scenery is that of the Meuse or Rhine exclusively ; and there is little variety to notice in his views of water and meadows at Dort, or the bolder undulations of the Rhine banks east of it, except such as results from diversity of effect due to change of weather or season or hour. Cuyp is to the river and its banks what Willem Vandevelde is to calm seas add Hobbema to woods. There is a poetry of effect, an eternity of distance in his pictures, which no Dutchman ever expressed in a similar way. His landscapes sparkle with silvery sheen at early morning, they are bathed in warm or sultry haze at noon, or glow with heat at eventide. Under all circum stances they have a peculiar tinge of auburn which is Cuyp s and Cuyp s alone. Burger truly says Van Goyen is gray, Ruysdae) is brown, Hobbema olive, but Cuyp " is blond." The utmost delicacy may be observed in Cuyp s manner of defining reflections of objects in water, or of sight from water on ship s sides. He shows great clever ness in throwing pale yellow clouds against clear blue skies, and merging yellow mists into olive green vegetation. He is also very artful in varying light and shade according to distance, either by interchange of cloud-shadow and sun- gleam or by gradation of tints. His horses and cattle are admirably drawn, and they relieve each other quite as well if contrasted in black and white and black and red, or varied in subtler shades of red and brown. Rich weed-growth is expressed by light but marrowy touch, suggestive of detail as well as of general form. The human figure is given with homely realism in most cases, but frequently with a charming elevation, when, as often occurs, the persons represented are meant to be portraits. Whatever the theme may be it remains impressed with the character and individuality of Cuyp. Familiar subjects of the master s earliest period are stables with cattle and horses (Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Petersburg, and Brussels museums). Occasionally he painted portraits in the bust form familiar to his father, one of which is dated 1649, and exhibited in the National Gallery in London. More frequently he produced like nesses of ladies and gentlemen on horseback, in which the life and dress of the period and the forms ot horses are most vividly represented (Buckingham Palace, Bridgewater Gallery, Louvre, and Dresden Museum). Later on we find him fondest of expansive scenery with meadows and cattle and flocks, or rivers and barges in the foreground and dis tances showing the towers and steeples of Dort. Cuyp was more partial to summer than to winter, to noon than to night, to calm than to storm. But some of his best groups are occasionally relieved on dark and gusty cloud (Louvre and Robarts s collection). A few capital pieces show us people sledging and skating or netting ice-holes (Yarborough, Neeld, and Bedford collections). A lovely Night on the Banks of a River, in the Grosvenor collection, reminds us that Cuyp s friend and contemporary was tli3 painter of moonlights, Aart van der Neer, to whom he was equal in the production of these peculiar effects and superior in the throw of figures. Sometimes Cuyp composed fancy subjects. His Orpheus charming the Beasts, in the Bute collection, is judiciously arranged with the familiar domestic animals in the foreground, and the wild ones, to which he is a comparative stranger, thrown back into the distance. One of his rare gospel subjects is Philip baptizing the Eunuch (Marchmont House, Berwickshire), described as a

fine work by Waagen. The best and most attractive of