Cows Reflected in the Water

It is a glorious summer’s day in this scene by Paulus Potter. People are enjoying themselves in the water; cows look on and seek coolness in the shade and the pond. Potter had a lot of fun with the reflections in the water, to which the painting owes its Dutch nickname: The Reflected Cow.

Although Potter portrayed the animals faithfully and in detail, he did not get their proportions quite right. The grazing sheep, for example, is too large if you compare it to the drinking cow. This is probably because Potter sketched the animals individually, later bringing all the sketches together without fully fine-tuning the scale.