The longer I looked, the stranger the cow seemed to me

Not so long ago I was walking through the halls of his museum with a German curator and near a painting by Cuyp, or perhaps it was Potter, he muttered something like ‘and then here the cows’, which came out rather laconically, and probably funnier than he intended. They are indeed cows, endless and world famous, in the Dutch paintings. The cow is not only an export product as meat, but also as art. It must – I have not counted, but I am almost certain – the most painted animal in the Dutch 17th century, and then it also received a revival in the 19th century.

There are now many cows to see in Dordrecht† The best of Aelbert Cuyp and a number of English painters who also got cow fever because of him. The longer I looked, the stranger the animal seemed to me. A cow is a curious animal. There are poems that automatically worm themselves to the front row of your thoughts in certain circumstances and I can tell you: it is great to watch the entire Cuyp exhibition without thinking about K. Schippers at any time: ‘whatever may be in her mind / her last word is always / boo† Dutch art, Dutch country and Dutch poets merge smoothly here. And while the yah-now-we-know-them-sigh of that curator lurks here too, I couldn’t get myself away from these two. Here, two cows claim their space completely sovereign: impassive, but with magnetically beautiful colors in ferocious paint movements.

rust brown

That combination of calm and intensity held me completely. Thomas Gainsborough painted the cows inspired by Cuyp but completely different, in warm rust brown, red and a kind of blue that you only see occasionally and only during an approaching storm. This detail is strong enough for its colors. Ignore the cows and you have an abstract work with the moving depth of a Rothko. There are actually two stories mixed up in this detail: the power of the paint, and the proximity of the cows. Enjoy on two levels.

It touched me in all those paintings that the cow so naturally took up space next to and with humans. I’m not used to seeing cows every day, let alone getting close to them, those sturdy, warm monsters that often look like they’re patiently waiting for something. There are still many cows in the Dutch landscape, but nowadays more are hidden in stables. That makes a big difference, I think, in how you interact with their products. If you never see cows, you don’t experience milk as something that was part of them. And not steak, and not leather, and not cheese. The cow is still ubiquitous, just not in the flesh. I began to long for that living, mighty presence, because of the attention the painter paid to them long ago, and with which he brings their awe-inspiring beauty close.