_Cuyp_ (Dutch: 1620-1691). _See 53._
This excellent portrait serves to remind us that, unlike most of his
fellow landscape painters, Cuyp could paint his own figures. Indeed
we have seen that he sometimes painted them in other landscapes, see
No. 152. The picture is signed "Aetatis suae 56, 1649. A. Cuyp fecit."
Cuyp is one of the most various of all the Dutch masters. "What
universality in the hand that could paint skies more glowing than
those of Both, clouds as vaporous as those of Van de Cappelle, water
more luminous than Van de Velde's, cattle as true to nature as Paul
Potter's, horses better than Wouverman's, horsemen more distinguished
than Vandyck's! Sometimes, too--and there is a noble example in our
National Gallery--we find Aelbert Cuyp painting portraits, not in the
stiff precise way that the father painted them, but with a freedom of
touch and a brilliancy of colour that place him between Van der Helst
and Rembrandt" (_Quarterly Review_, October 1891, and Fromentin's' _Les
Maitres d'autrefois_, "Hollande," ch. viii.).