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1 of 253523 objects
Two Cavalry Troopers Talking to a Peasant c.1650
Oil on panel | 36.0 x 46.0 cm (support, canvas/panel/stretcher external) | RCIN 404801
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This is an early example of an ‘Italianate’ Cuyp landscape and demonstrates the influence of Jan Both’s work. Cuyp uses the same orange-brown colour range for earth and foliage; the same yellow-to-blue spectrum of light spread across a glassy-smooth evening sky, with clouds painted in such a way as to be obviously sitting in front of this heavenly dome.
Both riders here wear something approaching fancy-dress: the mounted figure has old-fashioned slashed sleeves and the standing figure wears a 'dolman', a Hungarian garment associated with hunting in the Netherlands. These riders have also travelled beyond the familiar terrain of Cuyp’s Dordrecht patrons into a region reminiscent of the Rhine near Nijmegen, but much idealised to suggest the ‘gateway to the south’. Cuyp makes much of the effect of figures seen from below and silhouetted against the sky.
Signed lower left: A. CuypProvenance
Purchased by George IV from Sir Thomas Baring as part of a group of 86 Dutch and Flemish paintings, most of which were collected by Sir Thomas’s father, Sir Francis Baring; they arrived at Carlton House on 6 May 1814; recorded in the anti-room to the Dining Room at Carlton House in 1819 (no 86); in the Picture Gallery at Buckingham Palace in 1841 (no 33)
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Medium and techniques
Oil on panel
Measurements
36.0 x 46.0 cm (support, canvas/panel/stretcher external)
50.5 x 60.4 x 4.5 cm (frame, external)
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