The support consists of three horizontally grained oak planks and is bevelled on all sides. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1621. The panel could have been ready for use by 1632, but a date in or after 1638 is more likely. The colour of the ground is white. The paint layers were applied smoothly, with little visible brushmarking. The figures of the two men in the middleground were not reserved. The head of a man appears as a pentimento between the two men wearing hats on the left side of the composition.

Fair. There is a great deal of overpaint covering abraded passages, for example the face of the nurse holding the youngest child, the foreground, the horse and the trees. The bushes to the left and the dog to the right of the two male figures in the middleground are modern additions. The varnish is discoloured and streaky.

…; anonymous sale, Amsterdam (J. de Vries et al.), 17 December 1832, no. 13, as Jacob Gerritsz Cuyp (‘Eenige personenen kinderen, benevens een zwart paard door een Man vastgehoudende wordende, voorts een hond en schaap in een boomrijk landschap […]. hoog 8 p. 6 d. breed 1 el 1 p. 5 d. [86 x 115 cm] Paneel.’), fl. 110, to the dealer Jeronimo de Vries, for Adriaan van der Hoop (1778-1854), Amsterdam;¹¹Copy RMA; Van der Hoop Lijst, p. 3, no. 29: ‘Een Landgezigt met een zwart langstaart Vriesch Paard, door den ouden Cuyp’. on loan from the City of Amsterdam to the museum, as Albert Cuyp, with the rest of his collection, 1854;²²Van der Hoop Taxatie 1854, p. 2, no. 29: ‘Een zwaart paard nevens eenige figuren, fl. 200’. on loan from the City of Amsterdam to the museum since 30 June 1885³³Provenance reconstructed in Pollmer 2004, p. 144, no. 38.

Object number: SK-C-121

Credit line: On loan from the City of Amsterdam (A. van der Hoop Bequest)

Sometimes referred to in the past as a portrait of a family,⁴⁴See, for example, Chong 2002b, p. 188, no. C2. the present painting can be better described as a portrait of a horse and three children with servants. The horse is shown prominently in the centre of the composition. Judging from her apparel, the woman holding the youngest child is not the mother of the three children, but a nurse. Of the three men shown close to the children, only the clothing of the one in the middle, behind the coach, suggests a man of patrician standing. His inconspicuous placement, however, makes his identification as the children’s father and commissioner of the portrait unlikely. Although shown wearing a dress, the fact that the gold chain hangs diagonally across the youngest child’s chest may indicate that it is a boy rather than a girl, as the latter are most often shown wearing chains around their necks.⁵⁵For the manner in which chains are worn by children in 17th-century Dutch portraits as a possible indicator of gender see Kuus 2000, p. 79. Unfortunately, it has not been possible to identify the children in the present portrait.

A note written by the collector Adriaan van der Hoop, who acquired the picture in 1832, could provide a starting point for further research; Van der Hoop recorded in 1838 that ‘a reliable man’ had informed him that the painting came from the Glimmer family, one of the portrayed children being the grandmother of the last deceased Mr Glimmer.⁶⁶‘Door een geloofwaardig man is my verzekerd dat hy dit Schildery sedert vele jaren kent, dat hetzelve afkomstig is van de familie Glimmer, zynde een der kinderen daarop afgebeeld, de Grootmoeder van den laatst overledenen Heer Glimmer en dat nog in de familie de origineele quitantie bestaat van den schilder A. Cuyp, waaruit dierhalven zoude blyken dat het niet van den ouden maar van zynen zoon Albert is.’ Van der Hoop Lijst, pp. 22-23; transcribed in Pollmer 2004, p. 145, no. 38. Whether Van der Hoop’s ‘reliable man’ was actually all that reliable should, however, be doubted, as according to this source the original bill for the painting from its maker, ‘A. Cuyp’, was still in the possession of the family.⁷⁷See previous note. The painting can definitely not be attributed to Aelbert Cuyp.

When the painting was auctioned in 1832 it carried an attribution to Jacob Gerritsz Cuyp. Except for a period in the 19th century in which Van der Hoop considered it to be a work by Aelbert Cuyp, the Jacob Gerritsz Cuyp attribution was maintained in the literature until Chong rightly rejected it in 2002.⁸⁸Chong 2002b, p. 188, no. C2. Indeed, while portraits of children – often fondling a sheep – in landscape settings were something of a speciality of Jacob Gerritsz Cuyp, the figure and landscape style of the present portrait do not suggest his hand. Based on the dendrochronological results and the sitters’ costumes, a dating to the end of the 1630s would be appropriate.

Jonathan Bikker, 2007

See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements

This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 443.

Chong 2002b, p. 188, no. C2; Pollmer 2004, p. 145, no. 38, with earlier literature

1887, p. 33, no. 259 (as Jacob Gerritsz Cuyp); 1903, p. 79 (as Jacob Gerritsz Cuyp); 1934, p. 78, no. 755 (as Jacob Gerritsz Cuyp); 1976, p. 185, no. C 121 (as attributed to Jacob Gerritsz Cuyp); 2007, no. 443

J. Bikker, 2007, 'anonymous, Group Portrait in a Landscape, c. 1638 - c. 1640', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20027741