Lot 210
  • 210

Aelbert Cuyp

Estimate
12,000 - 18,000 GBP
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Description

  • Aelbert Cuyp
  • landscape with a view of dordrecht from the south with a lumber yard
  • signed and dated lower right: A. cuyp fecit/1639
  • oil on panel

Provenance

Eugène Heimgartner, Geneva, by 1925

Literature

S. Reiss, Aelbert Cuyp, London 1975, p. 28, no. 3, reproduced.

Condition

"The following condition report has been provided by Henry Gentle, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. The oak panel is cradled and is in good condition. There is a central horizontal join with restoration along it. There are visible discoloured restorations to the sky reducing horizontal wood grain and some loss, much of this is excessive and gives an impression of greater wear and tear here than there is. A damage to the right of the boat in the water has been conserved and some of the thinly painted areas here have been compromised. The varnish is very discoloured and removing it would improve the tonality."
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Catalogue Note

This is one of Aelbert Cuyp's earliest landscapes. The view looks north upstream on the river Maas towards Dordrecht, where the outline of the Grote Kerk can be discerned on the horizon to the right. There was a lumber yard at this point on the river, as Joan Blaeu's map of Dordrecht of 1652 shows. Timber, felled in Westphalia and floated in rafts down the Rhine to Dordrecht, was vital for the city's shipbuilding and timber trades, and Cuyp frequently depicted the  lumber rafts in his paintings. A similarly composed view, painted in the same year, and with a comparable low horizon and sharp pools of light and shade, shows a quayside in Dordrecht  and was recorded by Reiss with the Brunner Gallery in Paris in 1919.1

We are grateful to Alan Chong for confirming the attribution to Aelbert Cuyp on the basis of photographs.