Pâturage avec deux vaches

A pastoral scene from the Dutch Golden Age: two cows stand in a meadow before a broad landscape, the light falling over the fields and water beyond. Aelbert Cuyp, the great painter of Dordrecht, was the master of the golden afternoon light that turns the flat Dutch countryside into a scene of Italianate warmth, and this compact canvas shows him at the height of his powers, the animals set with a sculptor’s solidity against the luminous distance. The painting came to the Petit Palais with the Dutuit bequest and is held there, musée des Beaux-arts de la Ville de Paris.