National Gallery of Art

Biography

Aelbert Cuyp was born in Dordrecht in October of 1620. His father, Jan Gerritsz. Cuyp (1594-c. 1650) was a successful portrait painter in the city, and from him Aelbert received his earliest training as a painter, assisting his father by supplying landscape backgrounds for portrait commissions. It is uncertain whether Cuyp had apprenticed with a landscape painter, but he soon abandoned his father's style and subject matter and turned almost exclusively to landscapes and riverscapes, painting only an occasional portrait in his mature period. Arnold Houbraken, a native of Dordrecht, noted that Cuyp was a man of "onbesproken leven" [irreproachable character], and the surviving documents concern his active involvement in the Dutch Reformed Church and the city of Dordrecht, rather than his activities as a painter. His marriage to Cornelia Bosman (1617-1689), the wealthy widow of Johan van de Corput (d. 1650, a naval officer and member of an important Dordrecht family), took place on the 30th of July in 1658. After his marriage, Cuyp appears to have painted less frequently, probably owing to a combination of his increased church activity and to the absence of financial pressures. He was listed in the register of the dead on 7 November 1691, and buried in the Augustinian Church at Dordrecht.

Cuyp's early landscapes are clearly inspired by the compositional approach and monochromatic palette of Jan van Goyen, but by the middle of the 1640s, the influence of the Utrecht painter Jan Both (c. 1615-1652), becomes apparent. Cuyp never lived in Utrecht, but his parents had met in Utrecht while his father studied, and Aelbert apparently visited the city regularly. By the mid-1640s, Both had returned from Italy, bringing with him a new style, and Cuyp soon recognized the possibilities of this new compositional approach and began to employ large foreground elements in his panoramic scenes, infusing them with a warm light and atmosphere. The occasional classical motif and Italianate lighting effects found in his mature works derived from an association with Both, and perhaps other Italianate landscape painters Cuyp may have had contact with in Utrecht, and not to an Italian trip. Although no documents exist, drawn landscapes and townscapes do indicate travel by Cuyp within the Netherlands and along the upper Rhine in Germany.

Cuyp seems to have worked for a number of important Dordrecht families and was clearly an important artist in the city, although little is known about the organization or production of a workshop. Houbraken mentions only one pupil, Barent van Calraet (1649-1737), whose brother Abraham van Calraet (1642-1722), if not a pupil of Cuyp, certainly was a follower. It appears that many of Abraham van Calraet's works were among those mistaken for autograph Cuyp paintings by the beginning of the twentieth century when Hofstede de Groot included over eight hundred entries in his catalogue raisonné of the master. By the late eighteenth century Cuyp had many other followers and imitators, including Abraham van Strij (1753-1826) and his brother Jacob (1756-1815). [This is an edited version of the artist's biography published, or to be published, in the NGA Systematic Catalogue]

Bibliography

1884

Veth, J. H. "Aelbert Cuyp, Jacob Gerritsz Cuyp en Benjamin Cuyp." Oud Holland 2 (1884): 233-290.

1966

Stechow, Wolfgang. Dutch Landscape Painting of the Seventeenth Century. National Gallery of Art Kress Foundation Studies in the History of European Art, no. 1. London, 1966.

1969

Burnett, David G. "Landscapes of Aelbert Cuyp." Apollo 89 (1969): 372-380.

1975

Reiss, Stephen. Aelbert Cuyp. Boston, 1975.

1977

Aelbert Cuyp en zijn familie: schilders te Dordrecht. Exh. cat. Dordrechts Museum, 1977.

1987

Sutton, Peter C. et al. Masters of Seventeenth-Century Dutch Landscape Painting. Exh. cat. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 1987: 290-304.

1992

De Zichtbare Werelt. Exh. cat. Dordrechts Museum, 1992, 117-136.

1992

MacLaren, Neil. National Gallery Catalogues: The Dutch School 1600-1900. Revised and expanded by Christopher Brown. London, 1992: 86-87.

1995

Wheelock, Jr., Arthur K. Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1995: 32-33.