Fotoreproductie van schilderij De stier door Paulus Potter, coll. Mauritshuis 1904

This photogravure of Paulus Potter's painting 'The Bull', now at the Rijksmuseum, uses a palette of soft browns and greys to create a scene of pastoral serenity. I wonder, what was the photographer thinking when making a photograph of the artwork? It's a copy of a painting, not a study of light and shadow in a natural setting. I imagine them considering the textures of the surface, and how to capture the sheen of the original paint in grayscale. The original artist would have been thinking of the Dutch landscape tradition. Maybe they enjoyed looking at the animals and landscape. The painterly details in the bull's fur suggest a fascination with rendering the animal's texture and form. The human figure is relegated to the periphery, which might reflect a sense of perspective about our place in the natural world. There is something very beautiful about the fact that this piece is anonymous: an echo of a painting that is an echo of real life.