Paulus Potter: An Idealized Vision

Paulus Potter - Figures with Horses by a Stable - 1647 - Oil on panel, 45 x 38 cm - Museum of Art, Philadelphia (click photo for larger image)Dutch Painter Paulus Potter (1625-1654) was part of a family of painters, draughtsmen and etchers. He is celebrated chiefly for his paintings of animals, which appear prominently in all of Potter's works. He sometimes featured them singly, but more often painted them in small groups silhouetted against the sky, or in greater numbers with peasant figures and rustic buildings in an extensive landscape.

Potter entered the Guild of St. Luke at Delft in 1646. In 1649 he moved to The Hague, where in the following year he married Adriana, daughter of the architect Claes van Balkeneynde. In 1652 Potter settled in Amsterdam. He probably received his early training from his father, the painter Pieter Potter, but his style shows little dependence upon that of earlier masters. In so short a career there was little development in style between the earlier and the later works, but 1647 seems to mark a peak in his achievement, for many of the finest paintings bear that date.

In the work featured here, a man attempts to mount his horse with the assistance of another man, in the shaded yard in front of a stable. The woman standing next to them has momentarily turned her attention away from the infant she is nursing in order to watch the scene. Despite his close observation of nature, Potter offers not a truthful image of life in the country but an idealized vision that would have appealed to the fantasies of the artist's urban clientele.