Aelbert Cuyp (1620 - 1691)

Apart from his portraits and biblical scenes, Aelbert Cuyp, outstanding member of a family of painters resident in Dordrecht, owes his reputation primarily to the golden light that floods his landscapes, painted between the late 1630s and the end of the 1650s. His early, small-scale works, with their almost monochrome colouration reduced to only a few nuances, initially resembled the 1630s work of Jan van Goyen and Salomon van Ruysdael. In Amsterdam and Utrecht, during the 1640s, Cuyp encountered Italianate landscape painting. In particular Jan Both (1618–1652), who returned to Utrecht from Italy in 1641, and Herman van Saftleven (1609–1685), brought new ideas on the treatment of light, which Cuyp adopted.

Author: Oehring Erika

Literature: DUCKE Astrid, HABERSATTER Thomas, OEHRING Erika: Masterworks. Residenzgalerie Salzburg. Salzburg 2015, S. 38