A shepherd with cows.

Painted in 1647 and now held at the National Museum in Warsaw, this canvas combines two of Paulus Potter's core subjects — the herdsman figure and the cattle he tends — within a landscape that exemplifies the Dutch pastoral mode at its most balanced. The shepherd is not a heroic figure; he is a working man of the fields, present as social fact rather than classical allegory. This grounded realism distinguished Dutch pastoral painting from its Italian or French counterparts, which tended to elevate rural life into timeless Arcadian fantasy. Potter's herdsmen belong to a specific landscape, under specific weather, with specific animals. The 1647 date places this work in Potter's productive middle period, when he was working in The Hague and absorbing influences from the court milieu there without abandoning his naturalistic instincts. Dutch animal painting of this period had an audience not only among Amsterdam merchants but across Northern European courts, which explains the canvas's eventual presence in Warsaw's national collection. The cattle are arranged with compositional care: their overlapping bodies create a sense of informal grouping without becoming chaotic.

The canvas shows confident, varied brushwork — loose and gestural in the sky and distant meadow, tighter and more deliberate in the animals and figure. Potter builds the cattle's hides through layered glazes, achieving a sense of solid, three-dimensional form. The shepherd's clothing is rendered in earthy ochres and greys that integrate him naturally into the landscape palette.