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Willem Buytewech, Meadow
with a Shepherd and Cows, 1617, 11 1/16 x 14 15/16 in.,
National Gallery of Art, Washington, William Nelson Cromwell
Fund
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Aelbert Cuyp, Dordrecht Viewed from the East,
early 1640s, 7 1/2 x 17 1/2 in., Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
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Aelbert Cuyp was inspired by the drawings of a number of early seventeenth-century
Dutch artists who had recorded the inland waterways, woods, and farmlands
of the surrounding countryside. Many of these works were done in black
chalk in sketchbooks carried into the countryside. More elaborate
landscape drawings, such as Willem Buytewech's depiction
of a meadow with carefully colored cows and shepherd, were often
finished in the studio. Such drawings were intended to be sold as
independent works of art.
Cuyp filled numerous sketchbooks with panoramic views,
often with distant city profiles silhouetted against the horizon,
depictions of villages nestled along inland waterways, and detailed
studies of figures, animals, or plants. Many of these drawings are
remarkable for their painterly qualities, which Cuyp evoked using
colored washes and gum arabic, a varnish-like medium that heightens
the intensity of the foreground landscape elements in his Dordrecht
Viewed from the East. While the careful finish suggests
that this drawing was an independent work of art, Cuyp may also
have used it as a model for one of his paintings, which often combine
motifs from different drawings. Cuyp most likely painted in his
studio, a common practice at the time, rather than directly from
nature.
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