Willem Roelofs Dutch, 1822-1897

Willem Roelofs spent the largest part of his artistic career in Brussels, where he lived from 1847 till 1887. Inspired by the Barbizon School, he professed a daring, new style of landscape painting, founded on the direct observation of nature. Roelofs became a passionate advocate of plein-air painting, rendering a completely open-air feeling to his work. The present lot is a superb example of this, showing how the artist managed to preserve the freshness of his impressions on the canvas. Roelofs once stated that one should become part of a picture, as if one were outdoors, on the spot, breathing in the fresh air. The present lot indicates perfectly what he meant by this. 

His lengthy stay in Brussels didn't prevent Roelofs from keeping close ties with his native country. The Dutch countryside remained  an important source of inspiration to him. From 1856 onwards Roelofs spent practically every summer in Holland, working in the surroundings of Noorden, Abcoude and Kortenhoef. The present lot depicts a subject which earned him his greatest fame: watering cows in a polder landscape. This painting, which is full of sparkling details, is dedicated to his friend F.H. van Stralen, who was the chancellor of  the Dutch delegation in Brussel. Van Stralen kept close ties to a group of Dutch artists living in Brussels, like Roelofs, Paul Gabriël, J.H.L. de Haas, Pieter Oyens and his brother David, who portrayed Van Stralen in 1877.