The Bull

Paulus Potter's The Bull (1647) is one of the most celebrated and influential animal paintings in the history of European art. Painted when Potter was only twenty-two years old, it depicts a life-size bull standing in a meadow with a farmer, cows, and sheep — a monumental treatment of an entirely undramatic subject that astonished Potter's contemporaries with its combination of naturalist ambition and technical mastery. The Mauritshuis acquired it as one of its most prized possessions, and the painting became an object of pilgrimage for generations of painters and collectors. Potter's early death at age twenty-nine only intensified his posthumous reputation as a child prodigy of Dutch animal painting.

Potter renders the bull at near life-size, using a cool, clear Dutch daylight and careful modeling of the animal's musculature, coat texture, and individual physical presence. His handling is precise and controlled, with warm tawny tones for the animal against the cool greens of the meadow and the luminous Dutch sky above.