Landschap met vee en een boerderij 1778

Jacob Cats made this drawing of a landscape with cattle and a farm, likely in the late 1700s, using pen and brown ink, accented with brown wash. Note how the washes fill out the forms loosely drawn in ink. The thinness of the lines and the delicate application of the washes give the scene an airy, dreamlike quality. Drawings like this one were often produced as preparatory sketches, meant to explore a composition before committing to a painting. They allowed artists to experiment with light and shadow. In Cats's time, a burgeoning art market also meant that drawings like this one had value in and of themselves. Consider the labor that would have gone into a scene like this one – the unseen work of farming and animal husbandry that make a landscape 'picturesque'. These kinds of details add meaning and depth, encouraging us to look beyond the surface of a work.