Landscape with Cows and Sheep beside a Mountain Stream 

Jean-Baptiste Oudry painted this landscape with cows and sheep beside a mountain stream. Oudry lived during a time when ideas about class and country were being actively debated in France. While Oudry was principally a painter to the French court, in this painting, the pastoral is presented as the ‘natural’ order. But who benefits from this idealization, and who is excluded? The shepherd is rendered as a figure at one with the land, rather than as a worker. The painting presents an interesting narrative of the "natural" versus the constructed landscape. As such, it is difficult to consider what the painting includes without thinking about what it omits. Through his idyllic portrayal, Oudry invites us to consider the complex relationship between those who own land and those who work it. Perhaps we can reflect on the fact that landscape paintings reveal as much as they conceal.