Twee runderen in een landschap 1848 - 1895

Alfred Verwee made this print of two cows in a landscape using etching. He was a Belgian artist who lived in the 19th century, a time when the institutions of art were becoming more and more public. This image encapsulates many of the socio-historical forces at work in the 19th century. The rise of agricultural societies led to a fascination with rural life and the animals that sustained it. The print is deceptively simple, but it evokes the economic realities of the time. The landscape, once wild, is now tamed and used for agriculture. What’s interesting here is the institutional history: how did the art world shape Verwee's work? In a time when the official art academies were still very powerful, artists like Verwee were forging new paths, seeking inspiration not in classical history but in the everyday world around them. To understand this print fully, we might look at the exhibition history of the time, the rise of landscape painting as a genre, and the changing status of animals in art and society.