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Topics

Animals, farm

  • Summary
A Corner of the Farmyard
Image credit: Sandwell Museums Service Collection

A Corner of the Farmyard

George William Horlor (active 1849–1891)

Sandwell Museums Service Collection

Farm animals have been a feature of settled human life for thousands of years. The Nativity story, for example, features shepherds and their sheep, an ox and an ass, as important witnesses of this much-portrayed event. Artists have always celebrated the productivity of the countryside, from the Italian Renaissance to the war artists of the Second World War. Seventeenth-century Holland, whose wealth depended on agriculture and fishing, produced early masters of animal painting such as Aelbert Cuyp and Paulus Potter.

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Improvements in British agriculture in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were accompanied by increasingly popular animal shows and competitions. Paintings of prizewinning pigs, cattle and sheep were commissioned by their proud owners from local and often untrained artists.

Artworks

  • Goose Girl
    Goose Girl William Robinson (1866–1945)
    Shipley Art Gallery
  • Landscape
    Landscape Lucas van Uden (1595–1672)
    Temple Newsam House, Leeds Museums and Galleries
  • On the Avon near Stratford
    On the Avon near Stratford Alfred William Parsons (1847–1920)
    Somerset Heritage Centre
  • Beauty and the Beast
    Beauty and the Beast Charles Burton Barber (1845–1894)
    Reading Museum
  • Ganymede
    Ganymede Ralph Nicholas Chubb (1892–1960)
    Reading Museum
  • A Leg of Mutton
    A Leg of Mutton French School
    The Bowes Museum
  • Landscape with a Sportsman Shooting Ducks and a Boy Playing Bagpipes
    Landscape with a Sportsman Shooting Ducks and a Boy Playing Bagpipes Joos de Momper the younger (1564–1635) (follower of)
    The Bowes Museum
  • 2,025 more

Stories

  • Christopher Wright on cows

    Christopher Wright

  • The rectangular cows of Art UK

    Molly Tresadern

  • When sheep are just... sheep

    Tom Sutcliffe

  • Cattle feed advert for J. Bibby and Sons
    King of the farmyard: the animal pictures of William Gunning King

    James Trollope

  • Ten reasons to love Rosa Bonheur

    Jade King

  • Animals of the Chinese zodiac

    Andrew Shore

  • Landscapes and livestock: a golden age of Dutch cattle painting

    Rachel Bates

  • Why did Gloucestershire attract so many modern British artists?

    Angela Summerfield

  • James Ward: animal painter

    Pat Hardy

Learning resources

  • tate-tate-t07580-001-1.jpg
    Lesson plan
    Laura Ford's mixed media sculptures
    • KS3 (ENG)
      KS3 (NI)
      CfE L3 (SCO)
      CfE L4 (SCO)
      KS3 (WAL)

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  • dlb foundation
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  • heritage fund
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Art UK is the operating name of the Public Catalogue Foundation, a charity registered in England and Wales (1096185) and Scotland (SC048601).

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® is a registered trade mark of the Public Catalogue Foundation.
Art UK is the operating name of the Public Catalogue Foundation, a charity registered in England and Wales (1096185) and Scotland (SC048601).