781 - Landscape painter 19th century, pasture landscape with grazing cattle and view of a village

Landscape painter 19th century, pasture landscape with grazing cattle and view of a village Oil/canvas, unsigned, 19th c. Summer pasture landscape with a wide cloudy sky in warm light. In the foreground a dark brown head of cattle grazes, beside it a black and white piebald animal lies in the grass, at the right a red-brown beast stands before a group of trees and bushes. At the left in the middle ground a pale grey animal grazes in front of a hedge with slender poplars, behind it a wide expanse of meadow with small staffage cattle and on the horizon the silhouette of a village with a church tower. Age-appropriate condition, two backed areas, retouching, craquelure. 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 8.5 cm. The motif of the grazing herd of cattle is among the most popular pictorial genres of the 19th century. It goes back to 17th century Dutch animal painting around Paulus Potter and Aelbert Cuyp, which was taken up anew in the course of the 19th century by way of the Barbizon school and the Hague School. The calm juxtaposition of cattle, pasture and wide sky corresponded to the middle-class ideal of nature and was sought after as decoration for living and dining rooms. The view towards the distant church tower at the same time sets an ordering focal point of the kind landscape painting of the period liked to employ.