Two Cows and a Young Bull beside a Fence in a Meadow
Paulus Potter (Dutch, 1625–1654)
1647
- Medium
- Oil on panel
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- 49.5 × 37.2 cm (19 1/2 × 14 3/4 in.); Framed: 70.2 × 58.1 × 4.5 cm (27 5/8 × 22 7/8 × 1 3/4 in.)
- Culture
- Netherlands
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Painting and Sculpture of Europe
- Credit line
- In loving memory of Harold T. Martin from Eloise W. Martin, wife, and Joyce Martin Brown, daughter; Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection; Lacy Armour Endowment; through prior gift of Frank H. and Louise B. Woods
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
Paulus Potter, a prolific painter and etcher during his short life, elevated images of cows, oxen, and other domestic animals to majestic emblems of nature. His lavish attention to the physical appearances of such beasts—the varied texture and coloring of their hair, their characteristic poses, their bulky contours—borders on portraiture and likely derived from drawings he made from life. With Potter, animal painting blossomed into an independent genre in the Dutch Republic.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
