''The Young Bull'' ( nl, De jonge stier) or ''The Bull''The Bull

Mauritshuis The Mauritshuis (; en, Maurice House) is an art museum in The Hague, Netherlands. The museum houses the Royal Cabinet of Paintings which consists of 854 objects, mostly Dutch Golden Age paintings. The collection contains works by Johannes Vermeer ...

. Retrieved on 11 December 2014. ( nl, De stier) is an oil painting of a bull by Paulus Potter. It is in the collection of the

in The Hague in the Netherlands. At about life-size, this is an unusually monumental animal painting that challenges the hierarchy of genres by its almost heroic treatment of an animal. The large size allows space for very detailed realism, including a number of flies, that was both admired and criticised, especially in the 19th century. The painting is signed and dated 1647, meaning that Potter, who was born in November 1625, was only 22 when he completed it; he died in 1654, before he reached 30. The painting was highly admired in the 18th and 19th centuries; in the 1870s the French artist and critic

Eugène Fromentin Eugène Fromentin (24 October 182027 August 1876) was a French painter and writer, now better remembered for his writings. Life He was born in La Rochelle. After leaving school he studied for some years under Louis Cabat, the landscape painter. ...

asserted confidently that it,

Rembrandt Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (, ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), usually simply known as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker and draughtsman. An innovative and prolific master in three media, he is generally consid ...

's '' The Night Watch'', and his '' The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp'' (also in the Mauritshuis) were the three most famous paintings in the Netherlands. The painting was eventually enlarged by Potter, who added extra strips of canvas on both sides and at the top to his original composition, which just included the bull itself. The village in the background is Rijswijk, between

Delft Delft () is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and Municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of South Holland, Netherlands. It is located between Rotterdam, to the southeast, ...

and The Hague. Paintings of animals in landscape were Potter's speciality, this is the largest apart from his single life-size equestrian portrait; most of his works are far smaller. The bull was a symbol of prosperity to the Dutch, hitherto overlooked in art, and apart from the horse was by far the most commonly shown animal in Dutch Golden Age painting; goats were used to indicate Italy. This is an enormous and famous portrait which was in the

Prince William V Gallery The Prince William V Gallery is an art gallery on the Buitenhof in The Hague that currently shares an entrance with the Gevangenpoort museum. It is a recreation of the original gallery ''Galerij Prins Willem V'', once founded there by William V ...

collection that Napoleon took to Paris in 1795 and through a later treaty was returned in 1815. It hung in the Louvre for 20 years. Livestock analysts have noted from the depiction of the various parts of the bull's anatomy that it appears to be a composite of studies of six different animals from widely different ages. Like the equally life-size bird in Jan Asselijn's '' The Threatened Swan'' (1650), the bull can also function as a symbol of the Dutch Republic. Probably not until '' Whistlejacket'', a painting of an English racehorse of a century later, was an equally monumental animal portrait to be found.

Notes

References

* Fromentin, Eugène, ''Les Maîtres d'autrefois'', 1876, translated as "The Masters of Past Time", Phaidon, 1981, *MacLaren, Neil, ''The Dutch School, 1600–1800, Volume I'', 1991, National Gallery Catalogues, National Gallery, London, *Potter, Polxeni, "The Bull (detail), 1647, By Paulus Potter (1625-1654)". Emerg Infect Dis erial on the Internet 2001 Jan-Feb, accessed 3 May 2015

DOI: 10.3201/eid0701.AC0701 * Seymour Slive, Slive, Seymour, ''Dutch Painting, 1600–1800'', Yale UP, 1995, *Walsh, Amy L., "Potter (i)." Grove Art Online, Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. Web. 3 May. 2015
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External links

* *
The Bull
' at the Mauritshuis website {{DEFAULTSORT:Young Bull, The 1647 paintings Cattle in art Dutch Golden Age paintings Paintings in the collection of the Mauritshuis Sheep in art Birds in art

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