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AELBERT CUYP (1606-1691) SUNRISE ON THE DORT Canvas, 64 inches by 41 3/8 inches

IN the immediate foreground on the left two men in a boat, one of whom is shooting at some ducks seen in the extreme right of the picture. On the bank beyond three men are seen busily loading two boats with sacks. in the foreground to left centre are two fishing boats. On the right a man in a rowboat fishing; close by, a sailboat. In the middle distance and beyond, other sailboats. The town stretches along the opposite bank of the river. Signed on the boat at the lower left, "A. Cuyp."

Aelbert Cuyp was born at Dordrecht, in 1606, the year that also gave Rembrandt to Holland. Little is known of his life. LIke Rembrandt, he lived surrounded by political and religious strife; yet neither showed in his words the smallest effect of the tragedies daily enacted around them. Indeed, Cuyp, but antithesis, emphasized the calm serenities of peace; and while his compatriots were convulsed with civil war and were suffering and dying violent deaths, he quietly depicted idealistic scenese of husbandry, with lowing herds, peaceful river views with fishing boats, and lazy summer skies, all suggestive of the tranquil beauty of the life he himself lived near the Dort. Seaking of his painting of this picturesque stream, M. Waagen writes: "It would be impossible to describe the pervading transparency of the morning sunlight or the delicacy of the aerial perspective in the gradation fo a succession of vessels lying one behind another." The present "Sunrise on the Dort is an excellent example of these qualities os characteristic of Cuyp.

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