Gathered Horses

Around 1900 the water meadows of the IJssel just outside Hattem were open common grazing, and through the warm months cattle and horses were turned loose on them by the hundred. Voerman lived on the dike above those floodplains and watched the herds every day. This watercolour holds one ordinary piece of that routine, horses driven together on the low damp grass under the tall clouded sky. He worked it in pale thinned washes rather than heavy oil, letting the paper carry the light so the animals settle as soft masses on the wet ground. There is little event in it beyond the season's work of grazing. The river he painted flooded these same fields each winter and left them rich enough to feed the herds again every summer.