780 - Landscape painter 19th century, wooded pasture landscape with cattle by the water

Landscape painter 19th century, wooded pasture landscape with cattle by the water Oil/canvas, unsigned, 19th c. Wide river landscape beneath a high sky whose clouds lighten to orange towards the right edge of the picture. At the left of the foreground a grazing red-brown head of cattle, beside it a recumbent black and white piebald animal, at the right standing water. The centre of the picture is dominated by a strong group of trees with dense foliage, in front of and behind it further cattle on the meadow, in the background a low range of hills in blue haze. Age-appropriate condition, two backed areas, retouching, craquelure, losses of paint. Image 41.5 x 55.5 cm (HxW). Framed in a gilt decorative frame with ornamental decoration at the corners and centres, frame bumped, frame width 9 cm. The composition follows the construction of the ideal landscape as varied in large numbers by landscape and animal painters in the 19th century: a strong screen of trees as the focal point, a line of water leading into the picture and a low-set horizon above which the sky unfolds as the actual pictorial space. Grazing cattle served as staffage, giving the landscape scale and calm. The sky lightening to orange towards the edge takes up the evening mood that had belonged to the standard repertoire of the genre since Romanticism.