# Starting for the Hunt [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [CUYP, Aelbert]() - Date: 1651-1700 - Technique: Oil on canvas, 110 x 156 cm ## Commentary Starting for the Hunt c. 1652 Oil on canvas, 110 x 156 cm Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York This painting is among the earliest examples in the Netherlands, of sitters from outside court circles depicted in an equestrian portrait. The type had previously been a prerogative of royalty and high nobility. To some extent, the Dutch development during the 1650s may have been related to the collapse of the House of Orange as a political power and the rise of a burgher from Dordrecht, Johan de Witt \(1625-1672\), as the effective leader of the United provinces. Aelbert Cuyp's several equestrian portraits of the early to mid-1650s are all pictures of wealthy burghers \(most likely from Dordrecht\) hunting with hounds. The present painting represents two young members of a distinguished Dordrecht family: on the left, Cornelis Pompe van Meerdervoort \(1639-1680\), and, in the centre, his slightly older brother Michiel \(1638-1653\). The costumes of the figures are exotic outfits modeled on Hungarian dress. The two boys and their riding instructor wear tight-fitting velvet coats \(called "dolmány"\) over elaborate shirts. The coachman to the right wears a looser and heavier coat called a "mente." The hats are more European, but fanciful. ## Related artworks - [A Road near a River]() - [Children and a Cow]() - [Domestic Fowl]() - [Dordrecht Harbour by Moonlight]() - [Evening Landscape with Horsemen and Shepherds]() - [Grey Horse in a Landscape]() - [Herdsman with Cows by a River]() - [Herdsmen with Cows]() - [Landscape near Rhenen]() - [Landscape]() - [Landscape with a Hunt]() - [Landscape with a Timber Yard near Dordrecht]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()