Vache et moutons au pâturage

A white cow stands at rest in a grassy pasture, a cluster of sheep grazing calmly beside her beneath a wide, softly clouded sky, the animals drawn with the meticulous attention to anatomy and coat texture that made Eugène Verboeckhoven the most celebrated animal painter of his generation. Trained in the Flemish tradition that ran from the seventeenth-century animaliers down to his own day, the Belgian artist — born at Waasten in 1798 and active in Brussels — filled his pastorals with scientifically exact cattle and sheep, each beast a portrait; this small panel of 1840 was painted at the height of his fame, when his works hung in collections across Europe. The painting is held in the Petit Palais, musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris.