River Landscape with Cows

Cattle stand and rest along the bank of a broad river as soft evening light spreads across the water, a town and windmill silhouetted on the far horizon. Aelbert Cuyp, the master of golden Dutch light, painted this calm pastoral landscape about 1650, at the height of his powers. The low sun raking across the panel, the serene animals and the hazy distance are the very qualities that made his idyllic river scenes the most sought-after landscapes of the Dutch school, prized above all in England in the following century.