Cattle Drinking

Friedrich Johann Voltz 1817 - 1886

Summary

Cattle are drinking at a lake and grazing the tall, lush vegetation on its margin, while a herdsman leans against a nearby tree, smoking his pipe. The lake is surrounded by dense woodland. Voltz, who was born in Nördlingen, Germany, was a highly acclaimed landscape and animal painter of the Munich School. He was a pupil at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Munich, and taught there himself in the 1860s, as well as at the academies in Berlin and Vienna. This peaceful pastoral landscape with cattle distinguished by different markings is entirely typical of his oeuvre. He was greatly influenced by his study of Dutch old Masters at the Alte Pinakotek and Schleissheimer Palace, and by contemporary German painters, such as his teacher, the horse painter Albrecht Adam (1786-1862) and Christian Morgenstern (1805-1867). He was the first to paint breed-portraits of cows, a practice formerly undertaken only for horses.