Cow Boys

Cow Boys from 1807 by Augustus Wall Callcott is an early work in the rustic genre tradition, depicting rural laborers tending cattle. The subject reflects the influence of George Morland and the pastoral tradition that Callcott explored before developing his mature landscape style. Rural laborers with livestock were a staple subject in early nineteenth-century British painting, connecting to an idealized vision of the English countryside and its agricultural life. Callcott's early genre work demonstrates the variety of his ambitions before he settled on the landscape specialty that would bring him national fame. The Herbert Art Gallery and Museum in Coventry holds this early work as part of its collection of British art spanning the transition from eighteenth-century pastoral to fully developed Romantic landscape.

The rural genre scene is rendered with careful attention to the figures and animals, in a naturalistic manner that predates Callcott's later, more atmospheric approach.