Style
The development of Aelbert Cuyp, who was trained as a landscape painter, may be roughly sketched in three phases based on the painters who most influenced him during that time and the subsequent artistic characteristics that are apparent in his paintings. In general it may be said that Cuyp learned tone from the exceptionally prolific van Goyen, light from Both and form from his father.
Cuyp’s “van Goyen phase” can be placed approximately in the early 1640s. Cuyp probably first encountered a painting by van Goyen in 1640 when van Goyen was, as Stephen Reiss points out “at the height of powers.” This is noticeable in the comparison between two of Cuyp’s landscape paintings inscribed 1639 where no properly formed style is apparent and the landscape backgrounds he painted two years later for two of his father’s group portraits that are distinctly van Goyenesque. Cuyp took from van Goyen the straw yellow and light brown tones that are so apparent in his Dunes (1629) and the broken brush technique also very noticeable in that same work. This technique, a precursor to impressionism, is noted for the short brush strokes where the colors are not necessarily blended smoothly. In Cuyp’s River Scene, Two Men Conversing (1641) both of these van Goyen-influenced stylistic elements are noticeable
The next phase in the development of Cuyp’s increasingly amalgamated style is due to the influence of Jan Both. In the mid-1640s Both, a native and resident of Utrecht, had just returned to his hometown from a trip to Rome. It is around this same time that Cuyp’s style changed fundamentally. In Rome, Both had developed a new style of composition due, at least in part, to his interaction with Claude Lorrain. This new style was focused on changing the direction of light in the painting. Instead of the light being placed at right angles in relation to the line of vision, Both started moving it to a diagonal position from the back of the picture. In this new form of lighting, the artist (and viewer of the painting) faced the sun more or less contre-jour. Both, and subsequently Cuyp, used the advantages of this new lighting style to alter the sense of depth and luminosity possible in a painting. To make notice of these new capabilities, much use was made of elongated shadows. Cuyp was one of the first Dutch painters to appreciate this new leap forward in style and while his own Both-inspired phase was quite short (limited to the mid-1640s) he did, more than any other contemporary Dutch artist, maximize the full chromatic scale for sunsets and sunrises.
Cuyp’s third stylistic phase (which occurred throughout his career) is based on the influence of his father. While it is assumed that the younger Cuyp did work with his father initially to develop rudimentary talents, Aelbert became more focused on landscape paintings while Jacob was a portrait painter by profession. As has been mentioned and as will be explained in depth below, there are pieces where Aelbert provided the landscape background for his father’s portraits. What is meant by stating that Aelbert learned form from his father is that his eventual transition from a specifically landscape painter to the involvement of foreground figures is attributed to his interaction with his Jacob. The evidence for Aelbert’s evolution to foreground figure painter is in the production of some paintings from 1645-50 featuring foreground animals that do not fit with Jacob’s style. Adding to the confusion that is, Aelbert’s stylistic development and the problem of attribution is of course the fact that Jacob’s style was not stagnant either. Their converging styles make it difficult to exactly understand the influences each had on the other, although it is clear enough to say that Aelbert started representing large scale forms (something he had not done previously) and placing animals as the focus of his paintings (something that was specific to him).
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