We look across a body of calm water onto a wooden pier, rowboats, sailboats, and a town on the distant shore, all beneath a cloudy sky that takes up the top three-quarters of this horizontal landscape. The pier extends into the scene from the left edge, and stretches about a quarter of the way across the painting’s width. Three men and a woman, all with light skin, stand in a group near a fourth man, who sits on a piling at the front corner. They all wear charcoal-gray, muted blue, or fawn-brown clothing and hats. A rifle leans against the hip of one man, and another man looks out at the…
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A Pier Overlooking Dordrecht

Aelbert Cuyp (Dutch, 1620 - 1691)

early 1640s

Medium
oil on panel
Classification
Painting
Dimensions
overall: 44.5 × 75.9 cm (17 1/2 × 29 7/8 in.) ; framed: 63.5 × 93.66 × 4.45 cm (25 × 36 7/8 × 1 3/4 in.)
Culture
Dutch
Museum
National Gallery of Art, CNE-B
Credit line
Gift of George M. and Linda H. Kaufman
Rights
Public domain (NGA Open Access, CC0), as the museum states it.
Who can see it
Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed

View at the National Gallery of Art

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