Landscape with Cattle

Jacob van Strij

Oil on canvas

Metropolitan Museum of Art

A tranquil Dutch pastoral unfolds beneath a vast, luminous sky, where a herd of cattle rests and grazes on a riverside meadow while a sleeping herdsman and his dog lie nearby. Jacob van Strij, working in Dordrecht in the late eighteenth century, masterfully channels the golden-hued atmosphere and idyllic bovine subjects made famous by Aelbert Cuyp a century earlier, reviving the Dutch Golden Age tradition for a new generation. The soft diffusion of light across billowing clouds and still water lends the scene a gentle, timeless calm, while the distant sailboats and manor house hint at the quiet prosperity of the Dutch countryside. This warm, serene composition brings a classic pastoral elegance that feels equally at home in a traditional or contemporary interior.