Gallery unveils €1.9m Dutch masterpiece

The National Gallery of Ireland yesterday unveiled one of its most recent acquisitions, Landscape with a Portrait of a Youth and His Tutor on Horseback by the 17th century Dutch painter Aelbert Cuyp (1620-1691).

The work was purchased at Sotheby's last December at a cost of €1.9 million, with the support of the Heritage Fund, thus returning it to Ireland after an absence of almost a century.

It is likely that the painting once hung in Leinster House, since it belonged to one of the Dukes of Leinster, either James FitzGerald or his son William. After Leinster House was sold to the Royal Dublin Society in 1815, the painting was in Carton House, Co Kildare. At some stage it was sold into a private collection in the United States, and since then it has remained on the far side of the Atlantic.

Cuyp, who has on occasion been described as "the Dutch Lorraine" in reference to the great French-born, Italian-based landscape painter, was born in Dordrecht, where he was to remain throughout his life, apart from a few modest excursions.

Cuyp was a provincial artist, materially well off, and he felt no need to relocate to Amsterdam to further his career. Although his father was primarily a portrait painter, landscape was Aelbert's staple subject, often featuring contented-looking cows, and his portraits, including this one, are relatively rare.

Perhaps understandably, his most productive years as a painter were prior to 1658 when, as former director Homan Potterton notes in his catalogue of Dutch paintings in the NGI collection, he married a rich widow.

As one of the wealthiest inhabitants of Dordrecht, he lived in a beautiful townhouse and kept a residence in the country as well. His painting swells the ranks of one of the best-represented schools of European painting in the National Gallery of Ireland.