Woman Milking a Red Cow

The present painting marks the start of a new period in Dujardin's art, when he moved on from Italianate landscapes that bore the influence of Nicolaes Berchem to scenes inspired by Paulus Potter. Magisterially executed animals came increasingly to the fore, as did monumental human figures.

The duet of a milkmaid and a shepherd boy has a long pictorial tradition, stretching back at least to an engraving of 1510 by Lucas van Leyden. The subject is rendered by Dujardin as a simple evocation of everyday events. There is no communication between the characters. The cow, depicted almost portrait-like, the dog on the left, and the goat and sheep in the background, all share equal ranking with the human figures.

The bare soles revealed by the young girl as she kneels with her back to the viewer are conspicuously dirty. This motif can be related to the scandal of a few decades earlier provoked by Caravaggio's Madonna of Loreto in the church of Sant'Agostino, Rome. Dujardin, however, used this "pittoresque" (rather than crudely naturalistic) detail not in an altarpiece but in a profane scene.