Study of a Cow

Emile van Marcke de Lummen · c. 1875–90

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

56.6 × 83.5 cm (22 1/4 × 32 7/8 in.); Framed: 92.8 × 119.4 × 10.2 cm (36 1/2 × 47 × 4 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Realism

Quiet and unhurried, this intimate study captures a single cow with the kind of attentive honesty that defined the best animal painting of the nineteenth century. Émile van Marcke de Lummen trained under Constant Troyon, the Barbizon master whose cattle scenes set the standard for naturalistic animal art in France. That influence runs through every passage of this work — the warm, earthy palette, the soft diffusion of light across the animal's flank, the sense that the subject has been observed in the field rather than arranged in a studio. Van Marcke refined Troyon's approach into something more concentrated, stripping away landscape incident to let the animal itself carry the composition. His reputation earned him medals at the Paris Salon throughout the 1860s and 1870s, and his works entered major collections on both sides of the Atlantic during his lifetime. This hand-painted oil reproduction is produced on canvas using traditional techniques, allowing the tonal subtleties of the original — the weight of the coat, the particular stillness of the pose — to come through in a way that a print simply cannot replicate.