Provenance

C. Huggins

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The head and shoulders of a pale-skinned, clean-shaven man fills this vertical portrait painting. The man’s shoulders are angled to our left, and he looks off in that direction with light green eyes. He has a straight nose, a long philtrum over pale pink lips, a cleft chin, and the suggestion of a five o’clock shadow. He has brown hair and bangs under a brimless, square-crowned cap. His hair curls under along the bottom to create a diagonal sweep from his bangs, over his ears, and to the back of his shoulders. The edge of a white undergarment is visible above the high neck of his black coat, which is pleated vertically down the front. The man is shown behind a ledge painted to look like red, brown, and black marble and the background is clear blue sky. The artist signed the front center of the ledge, “Joannes.bellinus.”
Giovanni Bellini, Portrait of a Young Man, c. 1490, oil on poplar panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1939.1.182

Portrait of a Young Man

Giovanni Bellini · c. 1490 · oil on poplar panel ·  Accession ID  1939.1.182

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

River Landscape with Cows

Aelbert Cuyp · 1645/1650 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  1986.70.1