A Herdsman with Five Cows by a River
- Artist: Aelbert Cuyp
- Date: about 1650-5
- Medium: oil on wood
- Museum: The National Gallery
- Collection record: The National Gallery website
Listen to the free audio guide
About this artwork
This is the "A Herdsman with Five Cows by a River" by Aelbert Cuyp. Painted in the Dutch north, around about 1650-5, it's an example of Cuyp at the peak of his maturity as an artist. The painting is full of light and reflections, transforming a simple view of a river at evening time into visual harmony. Light puffy clouds drift overhead, leaving patches of shimmering water below that carry almost perfect reflections of boats, animals, and distant trees.
Notice how Cuyp has brought the magnificent beasts close to us, giving them as much character as – and much more significance than – the people around them. In a country greatly dependent on its cattle for its wealth, this was not an insignificant theme. The evening is so still that even the man in the central boat needs oars as well as a sail to propel him.
The painting is done in oil on wood, with a rich depth of colour and a warm graininess to the sand dune behind the cows. Cuyp's use of light here is characteristic of his work – he transferred the soft radiance of Mediterranean landscapes, seen by Dutch artists who had been to Italy, to his own Dutch scenes. This painting might have hung on the walls of a wealthy collector's mansion or in a humbler house where its theme would have appealed to the owner in a more personal way.
See it in person
A Herdsman with Five Cows by a River hangs in The National Gallery on Trafalgar Square, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
