Horsemen and Herdsmen with Cattle

Horsemen in bright dress have paused their white and chestnut steeds beside a cluster of trees; herdsmen rest with a flock of sheep, a cow and a laden mule, a lone rider gallops in the middle distance, and sailboats drift on the river winding toward hazy towers — a broad panorama of a river valley that has long been considered one of Aelbert Cuyp’s most masterful works. Cuyp painted it in the 1650s, the decade when the panoramic view became his signature, and the two hills crowned with buildings in the distance derive from the Rhine valley near Kleve and Kalkar, which he visited around 1651–1652 and recorded in a sketchbook; the far view is an imaginative evocation composed later in his studio. The painting was in the Dordrecht collection of Johan van der Linden van Slingeland by 1752, passed through the hands of the Baring family, Barons Ashburton, and entered the National Gallery of Art in 1942 with the Widener Collection. The painting is held in the National Gallery of Art, Washington.