View on a Plain

Sunlight sweeps through this painting, creating a dappled effect on the grassy promontory. Delicate details are accentuated with golden light, such as the faces and horns of the cattle and the glowing wool of the sheep. The paused figures and the windmills turning in the background lend an air of quiet, unhurried country life. The tower that dominates the horizon, and towards which the shepherd looks, is that of the church of Saint Cunera, in the city of Rhenen in the Netherlands. The view is thought to be taken from the Grebbeberg, a hill to the east of the city.  

The Dutch painter Aelbert Cuyp (1620-91) was little known outside his native Dordrecht until he was 're-discovered' by collectors in eighteenth-century Britain. They enthusiastically bought up his paintings to such an extent that few were left in his native country. This is one of Cuyp's early works, painted when he had begun to move away from the influence of the monochrome palette of Jan van Goyen (1596-1656), towards the warmer oranges and yellows of Dutch Italianate painters such as Jan Both (1618-52).