Abraham van Calraet

Abraham van Calraet painted horses and cattle in quiet landscapes, along with still lifes of fruit. His work is so close to that of Aelbert Cuyp, another Dordrecht painter with the same initials, that many of his pictures were long sold as Cuyps.

He was born in Dordrecht in 1642 and lived there all his life. He first trained as a sculptor with Aemilius and Samuel Hup before turning to painting, and he may have studied with Cuyp himself. Scholars such as Abraham Bredius only began separating his work from Cuyp’s in the early twentieth century, and some attributions are still debated. He taught his younger brother Barent, who became a landscape painter. He died in Dordrecht in 1722.

In A Horse and Cows in a Landscape, look at the warm, low light on the animals’ backs, the effect that made him easy to confuse with Cuyp.