Lot 1508 Dα

This work is dated 1826 and is one of the earliest known works by the animal painter Eugène Verboeckhoven. The young artist developed this motif of a meadow landscape with animals portrayed in the near foreground before a low horizon in the mid-1820s. He derived his inspiration from Flemish and Dutch landscape painting of the 17th century, especially that of Paulus Potter. The present work is particularly reminiscent of this artist's monumental depiction of cows and sheep kept in the Mauritiushaus in The Hague.
Verboeckhoven frequently accentuates the horizontal planes of the landscape and sky through the addition of vertical elements such as trees. The stump depicted in this work can also be found in a smaller piece kept in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and painted two years earlier (inv. no. 2507). The artist combines this refined composition with exceptionally detailed and smoothly painted “fijnschilder”-esque brushwork. He owes these effects not only to the late neoclassical tradition, but also to his initial training as a porcelain painter under his father. The peaceful, bucolic mood prevailing in Verboeckhoven's works is a further aspect that has augmented his popularity up to the present day.