Driving the Cattle out to Pasture in the Morning

This painting, from the former Viennese Czernin collection, is the only one of his works in a public collection in Austria. The manner in which Potter, aged only 22, makes the light of a spring morning the main subject of the picture is unparalleled in landscape painting. A cow lows as it emerges from the dark stall, as though greeting the spring sunshine. The sun, rising behind the stall, lights up the low-lying pictorial space. The animal’s silhouette accentuates the intersection of the diagonal zone of light and shade. One cow, standing in bright sunlight, guides the viewer’s eye towards the far distance, where more cattle and the outlines of a town can just be discerned. The animal’s rosy, almost transparent ear is an example of Potter’s precise observation. His nature studies – smallscale, with few exceptions – are executed with meticulous precision.
The trees are just beginning to bud. Wispy little cirrus clouds float across the sky. The gladness and elation felt by the viewer are linked to the Calvinist maxim Tot leering en vermaak/to teach and delight. This dictate helped to shape Dutch painting. Thus the depiction of the unkempt figures by the pigs might convey the admonition to be diligent and to begin the day’s work in good time.
Potter’s eloquent animal pictures and scenes with impressive lighting effects were widely appreciated by the public, who saw their own “promised land” with cattle-breeding and dairy farming as sources of national prosperity.

OEHRING Erika: Potter Paulus, Driving the cattle out to pasture in the morning, in: DUCKE Astrid, HABERSATTER Thomas, OEHRING Erika: Masterworks. Residenzgalerie Salzburg. Salzburg 2015, p. 52