1625 -1654 · Enkhuizen, Delft, The Hague and Amsterdam

Monumental cattle, Dutch light and careful observation make Paulus Potter the great animal master of the Golden Age.

Paulus Potter was born in Enkhuizen in 1625 and died in Amsterdam in 1654. Son of the painter Pieter Potter, he learned the trade early in the family workshop. After starting out as a history painter, he specialized in animals observed on pastures, near farms or in the woods. He worked in Delft, joined the guild of Saint Luke in The Hague and then settled in Amsterdam. Potter constantly takes his notebook to note an attitude, a dress, a horn or an effect of light. This patient look profoundly renews animal painting: cows, horses, sheep and bulls cease to be simple accessories of the landscape. Placed at low height and often lit by a precise sun, they become the real protagonists. Young Taurus in a landscape, painted in 1647, pushes this ambition to the monumental format; its realism nevertheless results from several studies of assembled animals. Two horses near a trough favor the calm of everyday life, La Prairie deploys cattle in a vast space and Le Bois de La Haye combines animal observation and forest density. Died of tuberculosis at twenty-eight, Potter left cattle in a vast space in less than a decade and The Hague Wood combined animal observation and forest density. Died of tuberculosis at twenty-eight, Potter left a work in less than a decade which would have a lasting influence on animal painters and 19th century realists. Died of tuberculosis at twenty-eight, Potter left a work in less than a decade which would have a lasting influence on animal painters and 19th century realists. Died of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-eight, Potter left a work in less than a decade which would have a lasting influence on animal painters and 19th century realists. Died of tuberculosis at twenty-eight, Potter left a work in less than a decade which would have a lasting influence on animal painters and 19th century realists. Died of tuberculosis at the Young Taurus in a landscape. His reading favors color.

Potter elevates the animal to the rank of subject: every hair, breath and posture is precisely observed, then tuned to the light of the Dutch landscape.