[Illustration: LANDSCAPE WITH CATTLE
From the picture by Cuyp, in the Dulwich Gallery]
Rembrandt is an exception to all rules, but most of the Dutch painters
did not allow themselves these excursions within their studios to
foreign scenes. They faithfully depicted their own flat country as
they saw it, and added neither hills nor mountains. But they varied
the lighting to express their own moods. Ruysdael's sombre tone befits
the man who struggled with poverty all his life, and died in a hospital
penniless. Cuyp is always sunny. In his pictures, cattle browse at
their ease, and shepherds lounge contented on the grass. He was a
painter of portraits and of figure subjects as well as of landscapes,
and his little groups of men and cattle are always beautifully drawn.
Ruysdael, Hobbema, and many others were landscape painters only, and
some had their figures put in by other artists. Often they did without
them, but in the landscapes of Cuyp, cows generally occupy the
prominent position. The black and white cow in our picture is a fine
creature, and nothing could be more harmonious in colour than the brown
cow and the brown jacket of the herdsman.
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