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Antique Signed Dutch Oil Painting of Cows and Sheep in Meadow

Antique Signed Dutch Oil Painting of Cows and Sheep in Meadow

$7,250.00 CAD
$7,250.00 CAD
Sale Sold out
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About This Piece

A herd rests at the end of the day in a Dutch water meadow, a horned cow standing watch over the group while the others settle into the grass around her. The painter has given the animals real individuality, the wet muzzle and heavy brow of the standing cow, the black-and-white markings of the one reclining beside her, three sheep folded down at the left near a pollarded willow, and a pair of white ducks and a mallard at the edge of the stream. It is a fully staged farmyard scene rather than a quick study, painted with the crisp, patient hand of the 19th-century Low Countries animal painters who carried the tradition of Paulus Potter and Aelbert Cuyp into their own century. The work is unsigned apart from an interlaced monogram at the lower right, and I was not able to identify the hand behind it, but it belongs squarely to the world of the great Dutch and Belgian cattle painters. It survives unlined on its original stretcher, which is uncommon for a canvas of this age and scale.

Details
Artist
Unidentified. Continental European, 19th century. The work bears an interlaced monogram reading "AB" at the lower right; I researched the monogram and was not able to match it, for certain, to a documented artist, so no attribution is made.
Signature
Bearing an interlaced "AB" monogram in reddish-brown at the lower right. No full signature is present.
Medium
Oil on canvas
Subject
Cattle, sheep, and ducks resting in a meadow beside a stream, with a pollarded willow
Origin
Continental European, likely Dutch or Belgian. The pollarded willow, the low flat horizon, the wide cloud-filled sky, and the black-and-white dairy cattle follow the Dutch meadow tradition most closely.
Age
Antique, mid to late 19th century. The reading rests on the keyed expansion stretcher, the unlined original canvas, and the even oxidation of the reverse rather than on style alone.
Canvas Size
34 in. W x 23 in. H
Frame Size
46 in. W x 35 in. H
Format
Horizontal landscape
Frame
Ornate carved and gilded frame in the 19th-century taste, with a fluted main hollow, acanthus-leaf corner cartouches, and running ornament borders. Some gesso losses to the lower rail, consistent with age. Frame is period to the work.
School or Movement
Dutch and Flemish animal painting, 19th-century revival. This is the tradition of cattle and sheep set in open meadow landscape that began with 17th-century Dutch painters such as Paulus Potter and Aelbert Cuyp, who treated farm animals as a serious subject in their own right, and was revived and made hugely popular again in the 1800s by painters like Eugene Verboeckhoven in Belgium and Albertus Verhoesen in the Netherlands. In the Low Countries a herd of healthy cattle in a green meadow was long read as an image of rural prosperity and calm, which is much of why these scenes were so sought after by 19th-century buyers.
Support
Canvas, unlined, on the original keyed mortise-and-tenon expansion stretcher with a vertical center crossbar
Stretcher
Original keyed expansion stretcher, hand-wedged corners, center crossbar. Consistent with professional 19th-century construction.
Condition

The painting is on its original canvas, unlined, and remains on its original keyed stretcher, which is increasingly uncommon for a work of this age and size. The tacking margins are intact and wrapped over the stretcher edges, and the reverse shows the even oxidation and settled dust of genuine age. Under UV examination I found no evidence of overpaint or retouching.

The paint surface carries a fine, even craquelure consistent with age, and an older varnish that has a slightly uneven sheen with some surface grime in the darker passages. The handling throughout is crisp and well preserved, with strong detail in the animals. I have not had the work formally assessed by a conservator, and I am describing only what is visible to me in hand and under UV; the piece would likely respond well to a professional clean, though it presents well as it is.

The frame is an ornate carved and gilded period frame with some gesso losses to the lower rail, consistent with its age. Recent hanging hardware, angle brackets and a braided wire, has been added for safe display and is not original.

Please review all photographs closely, as they form part of this description.

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