Aelbert Cuyp Dordrecht 1620 - 1691

John Barnard, (L.1419, twice, on his mount, lower right and verso);
A.W. M. Mensing;
His sale, Amsterdam, Mensing, 27 April 1937, in lot 156 (with another)  

As an artist who depicted cattle so frequently in his paintings, it is hardly surprising that Cuyp also made numerous drawings of these animals, from all sides.  Other examples, in which a factual representation of the cows themselves is combined with a hint of space-defining foliage, include a sheet of almost identical dimensions, possibly from the same sketchbook, in the Dutuit Collection in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Paris (see F. Lugt, Les Dessins des Ecoles du Nord de la Collection Dutuit, Paris 1927, no. 16, reproduced plate VII).  Another very comparable study, also formerly in the Barnard Collection and perhaps even the very drawing with which the present work was sold in the Mensing sale, is in the Rijksprentenkabinet, Amsterdam (see Aelbert Cuyp en zijn familie, schilders te Dordrecht, exhibition catalogue, Dordrechts Museum 1977-8, cat. no. 62).