Paulus Potter

Paulus Potter died at 28, and yet one of his paintings became a Dutch national treasure. 'The Young Bull', finished in 1647, shows a bull almost life-size against a low sky, painted with such care that you can pick out the flies, the rough hair, and the wet nose, a farm animal given the scale usually reserved for heroes and saints.

Potter specialised in exactly this, cattle, sheep, and horses in the flat Dutch meadows, studied close and set under big weather. In an age crowded with painters of grand histories, he made livestock his life's subject and did it better than almost anyone.

He worked in Delft, The Hague, and Amsterdam, moving where the patrons were, and packed a remarkable amount of work into a short career before tuberculosis killed him in 1654. 'The Young Bull' has hung in The Hague for generations, once prized so highly that it was taken to Paris as a war trophy under Napoleon and only later returned.