Wooded Landscape with Cattle

Adriaen van de Velde prepared his pictures on paper. He drew cows, sheep and goats from life, grazing, lying down or standing about, mostly in red chalk, and he reused those studies from one painting to the next. In this small panel, dated 1663 and less than 30 centimetres high, the animals are the real subject. A red cow lies at the foot of a big tree with sheep dozing against her, a young goat stands nearby, another cow grazes to the left, and a grey horse looks out from behind the trunk. A herdsman and a woman sit in the shade further back.

The panel passed through the hands of collectors in The Hague and Amsterdam before Prince William V bought it in 1765 from the Amsterdam collection of Pieter Leendert de Neufville. It belongs to the Mauritshuis and hangs in the Gallery Prince Willem V.