Cattle and Sheep in Pasture 1907

This piece, ‘Cattle and Sheep in Pasture,’ by William Sidney Cooper, is painted with a smooth finish, making the landscape look almost idyllic. It's so clean! Look at the cows, they're really glowing! Cooper seems to blend colors in the way you might expect watercolor to work. Everything feels sort of even, not a lot of impasto or texture to distract you. It’s like it’s been buffed to this even sheen. But when you look closely, there’s still something really satisfying about how he builds up the volume of those fluffy trees, layering and layering the paint. Take the cows, for example, each brown splodge looks like it has been individually placed to make up the overall form. It reminds me of the work of Constable, or maybe even a little of Corot, like art is just this ongoing visual conversation! In the end, it’s about how these marks come together to create this harmonious, yet slightly unreal scene.