Landscape with Cattle and Milkmaid

Aelbert Cuyp

c. 1650

One of the leading landscape painters in seventeenth-century Netherlands, Aelbert Cuyp adopted effects of light from Italianate landscape painting to bring a new grandeur to traditional Dutch subjects, including townscapes and scenes of cattle. In this tranquil farm scene bathed in golden light, Cuyp prominently places two cows in the foreground, a subject that generally symbolized prosperity and references the expanding dairy industry in the area around Dordrecht where Cuyp was based. In the distance are a church steeple and windmills, which have been identified with The Hague; Cuyp made sketches while traveling in the countryside and sometimes incorporated them into his paintings. The overall tenor of the painting, which stresses a harmonious relationship between the land and its inhabitants and between the farm and the town in the distance, can be understood in relation to the period of peace and prosperity that followed the 1648 treaty that ended war with Spain and established the Dutch Republic. [Permanent collection label, 2016]

Artist Aelbert Cuyp (Dutch, 1620–1691)
Title Landscape with Cattle and Milkmaid
Date c. 1650
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions unframed | 46 x 64 3/4 in.
Credit line University purchase, Parsons Fund, 1947
Object number WU 3811

Technique oil painting
Work type painting

Real / Radical / Psychological: The Collection on Display
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 09/09/2016 - 01/15/2017

Studying the Art Object: Materials and Methods
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 08/20/2010 - 01/10/2011

Portraits and Landscapes
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 06/01/1978 - 08/31/1978

Charles Parsons: Portrait of a St. Louis Collector
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 12/12/1976 - 01/30/1977

Civilization Revisited
Wichita Art Museum (Wichita, Kansas), 12/04/1971 - 01/30/1972

The Age of Rembrandt
Toledo Museum of Art (Toledo, Ohio), 11/26/1966 - 01/08/1967
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Boston, Massachusetts), 01/21/1967 - 03/05/1967
Legion of Honor, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (San Franscisco, California), 10/10/1966 - 11/13/1966

Grands et Petits Maitres Hollandais [verify location & dates]
Musée du Louvre (Paris, France), 01/01/1911 - 01/01/1911

1947
Rosenberg & Stiebel, New York

Inscription Recto, lower left, in brown paint: A. cuyp

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