Cattle in a Meadow

Paulus Potter painted this small panel in 1652. It is less than half a metre wide, the kind of picture that suited the wall of a Dutch town house, and cattle at this modest scale were what he usually made. The light is late afternoon. Cows stand and rest in the meadow, one grazes further back, and in the shade of a pollard willow on the right a few pigs lie in the mud. On the barn wall behind that willow he signed his name and the date. About a century later the panel belonged to Govert van Slingelandt, a collector in The Hague. After his death his widow sold the whole collection in one go, in 1768, to Prince William V, the stadholder of the Dutch Republic, who was then 20 years old.