River Landscape with Cows

Eight cows quietly chew their cud on the bank of a river while on the dike above two herdsmen talk to a passing rider, their distant forms accented by shafts of late afternoon light breaking through the billowing clouds. To the seventeenth-century Dutch, the well-fed cow symbolized the nation’s prosperity. Milk, butter, and cheese were important components of the Dutch diet, and the succulent cheeses marketed at Gouda and Alkmaar were among the main export products to France, the Spanish Netherlands, and the Iberian peninsula.

Aelbert Cuyp was not the first Dutch artist to focus on a herd of cows, but he portrayed them with a dignity lacking in similar works by his predecessors. Throughout his career, Cuyp remained interested in depicting rural Dutch landscapes, but by the late 1640s he had started to incorporate Italianate elements, derived from the works of Dutch artists who had studied in Italy. Cuyp dramatized his images by portraying his cattle within a generalized, arcadian landscape. By placing his viewer at a low vantage point and silhouetting the cattle against a light-filled background, Cuyp imbued his scene with an aura of pastoral well-being. The "single-wing composition," in which a large diagonal form fills the lower right quadrant of the panel, is characteristic of Dutch landscape paintings of the 1640s and 1650s.