A Seated Shepherd with Cows and Sheep in a meadow

by Aelbert Cuyp (1620-1691)

Gallery 41 Dutch and Flemish Paintings (17th Century)

The artist

Aelbert Cuyp belonged to a family of painters who lived in Dordrecht in Holland. He began his career by adding backgrounds to portraits painted by his father and later painted landscapes influenced by the work of Jan van Goyen. In the 1640s, Cuyp began to work on a larger scale and to specialise in painting scenes of sheep and cows, often lit by sunset effects like this. He did not date his pictures but it is thought that this painting dates from about 1644 and is an early example of the kind of subject and manner of painting for which Cuyp is famed.

Cuyp’s influence

Cuyp’s paintings were much admired and collected in 18th-century Britain. This picture has been in England at least since 1775. As a result of this enthusiasm for Cuyp, many of his works could be seen by 18th-century British artists. Several of these artists, including Richard Wilson, Thomas Gainsborough and J.M.W.Turner, imitated his work. None of the Ashmolean’s paintings by these artists can be said to show the direct influence of Cuyp, but there are works by all three in Gallery 46 which certainly show the influence of other 17th-century landscape painters whose work was then equally popular in England.