822 - Otto Zinsmeister, farmer with draught horses at wheel plough, cattle team in the field, genre scene

Otto Zinsmeister, farmer with draught horses at wheel plough, cattle team in the field, genre scene Oil/canvas, signed lower right "Zinsmeister", field landscape with farm work, in the foreground two draught horses with collar harness, the left one brown with a light mane, the right one light, facing left, behind them a stooping farmer in a white shirt, dark waistcoat and hat holding the rein, on the right a wheel plough, on the left in the middle ground a team of two red and white pied cattle in the yoke with a man in a hat, between them ploughed furrows, on the right a group of trees, in the background a wide plain with fields and rows of trees under a yellowish to reddish tinted sky, condition commensurate with age, backed area lower right, canvas dented, image 60.5x91 cm (HxW), framed, frame chipped, frame width 8 cm The painting belongs to animal painting, which alongside landscape, portrait, genre painting and still life forms a genre of its own within representational painting and found a wide audience in the 19th century through genre painting. The peasant scene with horse team and cattle team shows the tilling of the fields before motorisation: in Central Europe oxen and cows first drew the plough, later, on larger farms, the more powerful horses, whose pulling power only the horse collar made fully usable. Only the light tractors with internal combustion engines of the early 20th century replaced the team as the source of traction in the field.