RUBENS, Peter Paul
(b. 1577, Siegen, d. 1640, Antwerpen)

Landscape with Cows and Wildfowlers

c. 1630
Oil on panel, 113 x 176 cm
Staatliche Museen, Berlin

On the edge of a wood, through which flows a stream, stands a herd of cattle. The last rays of the evening sun are shining through the trees, bathing the landscape in warm light. As maids from the nearby farm milk the cows, a wildfowler fires at a duck. The great variety of tree-trunks and foliage, of plants and animals, typifies that natural scheme of things in which air and water, light and warmth, sunshine and rain are provided in accordance with God's plan. That a peaceful life and the threat of death are never far apart is demonstrated by the disturbing proximity of the fowler with his gun to the women at work.

Of the large and varied number of pictures Rubens completed in his lifetime, relatively few were landscapes, and of these the Berlin painting is one of the few in large format; it has a close affinity with two others, one of which is in the Royal Collection in London, the other in the Munich Pinakothek. Several of the figures in all three pictures are alike, although they are disposed in different ways. This does not detract from the significance of each individual work, but it does throw an interesting light on the painter's methods of working and on his habit of referring back to earlier sketches and studies. To judge by its composition and style of painting, the Berlin picture was the last of the group and must have been painted around 1630. In designing the forest, Rubens broke away almost entirely from previous sketches and with surprising artistic licence developed a quite novel arrangement of light and shade. The steep angle of the sun's rays creates a remarkable feeling of space and atmosphere. The lively brushwork gives an impression of complete spontaneity on the part of the artist, who was in no way inhibited by having to make corrections and may even have allowed for an extension of the panel-format.

This painting was in the Duc de Richelieu's collection in the seventeenth century, together with two other Rubens works now in the Berlin Gallery, Andromeda chained to the Rock and The Shipwreck of Aeneas. In a description of the collector's art-treasures by Roger de Piles, published in 1677, this landscape is entitled Les Vaches. The Duke, a great-nephew of the famous Cardinal of the same name, took the opportunity, while on Louis XIV's campaigns in the Netherlands, to buy important works by Rubens.




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