View on Cleves

View of Dordrecht Groothoofdspoort

View of Castle Purmerend

 Landscape near Rhenen

Boats on the estuary of the Hollands Diep river near Dordrecht

Portrait of a boy and the young Bergere Chevre

Departure for the promenade on a horse

Landscape with three Cavaliers

Rest in the Camp

The Groothoofdspoort in Dordrecht from the West

View of Schraven-Deel

Landscape with a Road on the Edge of a Forest

The Dairy Maid

Sea by Moonlight

Sunset over the River

Utrecht with the Vecht River and the Pellekussenpoort

River Landscape with Bridge

River Scene with Milking Woman

Path between Trees

Domestic Fowl

Rooster and Hens

Pasture with cows and shepherds

This landscape poetry is one of the most significant examples of the early works of the artist, probably from 1641 to 1643. Soft sunlight meets the sky, air and earth. Between gnarled oak, which is to be that they have some weather have survived, the honey-colored grazing ground. With expressive handwriting, the artists short, powerful strokes and pasty applied the structured surface in the foreground and middle ground. In the foreground cows are resting in the shade. Two shepherds with their dog have established themselves besides an oak. Under the bright, high clouds sky opens the image space to low-lying horizon and the sea. Through the horizon line of the architecture of the Utrecht Maria-church. The remote view confuse the diffuse light background, fills the room with wide screen. The brownish-yellow clay changes here in a soft white, bright in the gray clouds of lively game goes on. Cuyp composed in consideration of light and air prospect of a tranquil idyll. He created a piece of Holland, which invites the viewer to pause, to the senses through the allegorical content of the image with religious, political and economic associations, but also about light and space as an image event itself to be effective.

Cows in the Water

The meeting of David and Abigail

Thunderstorm over Dordrecht

This is Dordrecht in its plain, the home city of the painter, he frequently depicted it in the background of his pictures. The massive church is the Grote Kerk; farther to the left is the town-hall. From the left, heavy grey rain clouds sweep across the picture. Rain is falling in sheets (left of the church). To the right, the sky is still pale-blue. Lightning is striking, in precisely observed, thick yellow streaks and not in naively imagined zig-zags.

River Landscape with Cows

Horsemen and Herdsmen with Cattle

Lady and Gentleman on Horseback

The Maas at Dordrecht

Cuyp's masterful depiction of Dordrecht differs extensively from Van Goyen's calm and serene view of this island city. Here the river Maas is the focus of great activity; in the foreground a dignitary dressed in a black jacket with an orange sash has just arrived at a large sailing ship. He is greeted by a distinguished looking gentleman who stands among numerous other figures, including a man beating a drum. On the left a second rowboat approaches, carrying other dignitaries and a trumpeter who signals their impending arrival. Most of the ships of the large fleet anchored near the city have their sails raised and flags flying as though they are about to embark. The early morning light, which floods the tower of the great church and creates striking patterns on the clouds and sails, adds to the dramatic character of the scene.

Herdsmen Tending Cattle

Piping Shepherds

The figures resemble those painted by the artist's father, Jacob Gerritsz. Cuyp, but the canvas is not one of their collaborative efforts.

Young Herdsmen with Cows

Cuyp was the most talented member of a family of painters in Dordrecht. He was influenced in the early 1640s by the Haarlem landscapists Jan van Goyen and Salomon van Ruysdael, and then by Jan Both, who returned to his native Utrecht about 1642 after a few years in Italy. These sources combine in this canvas of about 1650 to transport a corner of Dutch dairy land to the Arcadian Countryside of Claude Lorrain.

Children and a Cow

Cows and Herdsman by a River

Landscape with Trees

Cuyp's looped and choppy lines, plumped up with touches of color, bring us the beauty of the Dutch Countryside in summer, when warm light flickers through twigs and foliage. Cuyp was probably in his early twenties when he made this fine sheet. It belongs to a group of drawings executed in and around Utrecht, his mother's hometown.

Starting for the Hunt

Michiel (1638-1653) and Cornelis Pompe van Meerdervoort (1639-1680) with Their Tutor and Coachman. Inventories of the castle of Meerdervoort made in 1680 and 1749 indicate that Cuyp painted two boys of the wealthy Pompe van Meerdervoort family of Dordrecht with their tutor Caulier and the coachman Willem. It must have been painted by1653, the year of Michiel's death.

Dordrecht Viewed from the North, with a Windmill in the Foreground

Landscape with the Flight into Egypt

This imaginary Mediterranean view is reminiscent of Jan Both, who returned from Rome to Utrecht around 1642. Cuyp probably painted it about a decade later.

Dordrecht sunrise

This early morning scene, with its golden expanse of sky and water, is one of Cuyp's most ambitious attempts to render light and atmosphere. Cuyp depicts the port city of Dordrecht as seen from the north, looking across the river Merwede. Most prominent among the recognizable buildings is the Groote Kerk, the church on the horizon to the left of the large boat in the foreground.

A View of the Maas at Dordrecht

A boat divides this panoramic river view, with the town of Dordrecht on the right, where the river Maas meets the sea, and the city of Zwijndrecht opposite. Although the painting looks as if it were painted at the scene, Aelbert Cuyp executed the canvas in his studio, using studies previously made outdoors. By employing an extreme horizontal format, he emphasized the flatness of the land under the wide expanse of sky. The low horizon opens out to a vast, cloud-laden sky, evoking the changeability of coastal weather. Cuyp included precise details that convey the particularities of the specific place portrayed: the boat's rigging and flag and the towns' windmills, houses, and churches.

The Flight into Egypt

View of the Maas near Dordrecht

View of the Rhine Valley (recto; View of the Heideberger Mill Near Cleves (verso)

Panoramic Landscape with Shepherds

Landscape with Horse Trainers

The Valkhof at Nijmegen from the Northwest

The Baptism of the Eunuch

Orpheus Charming the Animals

Landscape with Maid Milking a Cow

Landscape with the Ruins of Rijnsburg Abbey

A Herd of Cows with a Herdsman and a Rider

Cuyp was influenced first by the simplified and often monochromatic palette of Jan van Goyen, and later by the Italianate landscapes of Jan Both. He is perhaps best known for his ability to illuminate selectively and with great mastery various parts of his landscapes. Here, with one of his favorite subjects, herdsmen and cattle, Cuyp carries a golden haze of sunlight over the figures in a wonderful play of light and shadow.

The Windmills at Kinderdijk (recto)

Ice Scene before the Huis te Merwede at Dordrecht

Landscape with Shepherds and Shepherdesses

A Farm with Cottages and Animals

Bulls on a Riverbank

Goatherd in landscape, a Distant View of Amsterdam

Young Sportsman

Two Horsemen on a Ridge

Hunter in a river landscape

Barges close-hauled in light Airs on a River

A view of Dordrecht from the end of the Papendrechtse bank of the river Noord

This large sketch was last auctioned in 2001 and was sold for $ 2.866.000.

A river Landscape with Peasants unloading a Barge, Dordrecht beyond

A River Landscape with a Drover herding Cattle over a Bridge and Shepherds at Rest by ruined Buildings

Gentlemen and a Lady on a Track at the Edge of a Wood with the Artist sketching in the Foreground

Dordrecht Harbor by Moonlight

Landscape with a Hunt

The painting represents a landscape with a hunt and a portrait of a youth with his tutor. This is a typical Cuyp painted in his grandest manner, and dating from the most fruitful period of his career. It is pictures of this sort that established his reputation beyond his native town Dordrecht, and that made him so popular with English (and Scottish and Irish) aristocratic collectors in the 18th century, with a wider circle of merchant-collectors in the 19th, and with American collectors in the 20th century.

The Grote Kerk in Dordrecht from the Southwest (verso)

The Valkhof at Nijmegen from the East