de, and only
painted as an amateur. In spite of this, he was a great landscape
painter, and has given delight to thousands by his power of expressing
his own love of nature. Little is known of Cuyp's life, and the date of
his death is uncertain, farther than it was later than 1638.

In affected enthusiasm, Cuyp has been called the Dutch Claude, but in
reality, Cuyp surpassed, Claude in some respects. The distinction, which
Mr Ruskin draws between them, is that, while Claude, in the sense of
beauty, is the superior to Cuyp, in the sense of truth Claude is the
inferior. Besides Cuyp's landscapes, he painted portraits, and what is
called 'still life' (dead game, fruit or flower pieces, etc.), but Cuyp's
triumph was found in his skies, with their 'clearness and coolness,' and
in 'expressions of yellow sunlight.' Mr Ruskin admits, while he is
proceeding to censure Cuyp, parts might be chosen out of the good
pictures of Cuyp which have never been equalled in art.' On another
occasion, Mr Ruskin has this passage full of dry humour in reference to
Cuyp:

'Again, look at the large Cuyp in Dulwich Gallery, which Mr Hazlitt
considers "finest in the world," and of which he very complimentarily
says, "the tender green of the valleys, the gleaming lake, the purple
light of the hills" have an effect ought to have apologized before now
for not having studied sufficiently in Covent Garden to be provided with
terms of correct and classical criticism. One of my friends begged me to
observe, the other day, that Claude was "pulpy;" another added the yet
more gratifying information that he was "juicy;" and it is now happily
discovered that Cuyp is "downy." Now I dare say that the sky of this
first-rate Cuyp is very like an unripe nectarine: all that I have to say
about it is, that it is exceedingly unlike a sky. We may see for
ourselves Cuyp's lovely landscapes both in the National Gallery and at
Dulwich.

Paul Potter was born at Enkhuysen, in North Holland, in 1625, and was
the son of a painter. Paul Potter settled, while still very young, at
the Hague as an animal painter, and died in his thirtieth year, in 1654.
His career, which was thus brief, had promised to be very successful,
and he had established his fame, while no more than twenty-two years of
age, by painting for Prince Maurice of Nassau that which continues his
most renowned, though probably not his best picture, his 'Young Bull,'
for some time in the Louvre, now restored to