A piece of Potter

In his 1779 book (Leiden University Libraries LTK 1889), Zuyderhoudt includes a poem in which a peasant woman speaks about the virtues of cows: they provide meat (to eat), milk (to make butter), fat (to make candles), and leather (to make shoes). It is accompanied by an image of a woman milking a cow under a tree:

Zuyderhoudt 1779 (Leiden University Libraries LTK 1889)

Zuyderhoudt had used the same image before on a single trompe l'oeil sheet from 1765, which is now in the Rijksmuseum:

Zuyderhoudt 1765 (Rijksmuseum, RP-T-1916-21)

Charlotte Wytema, PhD student at the Courtauld Institute, very kindly informed me that the drawings were made after a copy of an etching of a bull by Paulus Potter from 1650, and she provided an ample list of sources as well. This is the original etching (first state) as kept by the Rijksmuseum:

Paulus Potter, Bull (Rijksmuseum, RP-P-OB-12.757)

 

 

 

This print yielded many copies in reverse, such as this one by A. Blooteling: 

A. Blooteling (after Paulus Potter), Bull (Rijksmuseum, RP-P-1904-899)

Zuyderhoudt (or rather: the picture copied by Zuyderhoudt) must have used one of these copies in reverse. His image, however, represents only a section of the work: its focus is not on the main bull, but it hones in on the group of cows and the milking woman in the background. This, of course, fits the topic of the poem.

Many thanks to Charlotte Wytema for helping trace this piece of Potter!