The rendering of space is excellent.
But Cuyp has not been content with the features of his native Holland.
He has put an imaginary mountain in the distance and a great hill in the foreground.

It is certainly not a view that Cuyp ever saw in Holland with his own eyes.

He thought that the mountain's upright lines were good to break the flatness; and the finished composition, if beautiful, is its own excuse for being.
[Illustration: LANDSCAPE WITH CATTLE From the picture by Cuyp, in the Dulwich Gallery] Rembrandt is an exception to all rules, but most of the Dutch painters did not allow themselves these excursions within their studios to foreign scenes.

They faithfully depicted their own flat country as they saw it, and added neither hills nor mountains.

But they varied the lighting to express their own moods.