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A herdsman and his cows linger on the banks of the river Rhine, as a gentleman on horseback slowly approaches. In the distance is the hazy silhouette of Ubbergen Castle. The castle in the background, demolished in 1712, was near Nijmegen on the Rhine. This castle was a symbol of Dutch resistance to Spanish occupation and a source of great national pride. Trained and active in Dordrecht, Cuyp was one of the principal Dutch landscape painters of the seventeenth century. Although Cuyp never visited Italy himself, his landscapes glow with the golden Italian light he saw in the work of his contemporaries who had. His rolling landscapes bathed in golden light earned him the title of 'the Dutch Claude'. This picture probably dates from the mid 1650s and was already in Britain during the eighteenth century.