CORNELIS SAFTLEVEN (GORINCHEM 1607-1681 ROTTERDAM)

The versatile artist Cornelis Saftleven painted about a dozen cattle markets, the earliest of which, dated to 1659 and depicting the ruins of Castle Honingen, was very recently acquired by the Rotterdam Museum. The present painting is another particularly fine example in which the artist demonstrates his supreme abilities at rendering individual animals, integrating them into a compelling composition and thus cleverly drawing the observer into the narrative. Both the milkmaid and cow in the centre of the composition appear similarly in two other pictures by the artist; the first, painted in 1660, found in the Mauritshuis, The Hague, the other, held in a private collection (W. Schulz, op. cit., no. 576). These possibly derive from an unknown drawing as pointed out by Wolfgang Schulz (op. cit.).

Cornelis Saftleven stands out for his remarkable resourcefulness as an artist at a time in which the majority of Dutch painters specialized in a singular genre of painting. Besides cattle markets and animal studies his oeuvre consists of peasant scenes, guard-rooms, rural interiors, portraits and Biblical and mythological subjects.