Landscape with cows and a horse on the island of Æbelø.

Carl Frederik Aagaard's 'Landscape with Cows and a Horse on Æbelø' (1889) is a companion subject from his visit to the uninhabited Funen island — the presence of cattle and horses on the island adds a pastoral element to what was otherwise a wild landscape. The animals' presence on the island, which was grazed by a few domestic animals despite its otherwise wild state, gave the landscape a pastoral rather than purely wild character, connecting it to the agricultural landscape of the surrounding mainland.

Aagaard renders the grazing animals within the island's landscape with his characteristic combination of animal observation and landscape sensitivity — the cattle and horse in their natural grazing postures and groupings depicted within the specific vegetation and terrain of the Æbelø landscape. His handling of the animals as natural elements of the landscape rather than as studied genre subjects gives the composition its naturalistic coherence. The island's specific light quality creates the atmospheric context.