Watermark: none visible through lining.
The drawing is one of six red chalk studies of cows by the artist owned by The Library.
Artists working in nature have long drawn the animals and livestock they could observe up close. Van de Velde, active in his native Holland in the seventeenth century, made numerous studies of cattle and oxen grazing, resting, and laboring, both as an exercise and for use in later etchings and paintings. Two hundred years later, early photographers similarly ventured into villages and onto farms to portray beasts of burden.
Signed with initials at left, in faded brown ink, "A.V.V:".
Robinson, J. C. (John Charles), Sir, 1824-1913, former owner.
Murray, Charles Fairfax, 1849-1919, former owner.
Morgan, J. Pierpont (John Pierpont), 1837-1913, former owner.
Collection J. Pierpont Morgan : Drawings by the Old Masters Formed by C. Fairfax Murray. London : Privately printed, 1905-1912, III, 224(1), repr.
Stampfle, Felice. Rubens and Rembrandt in Their Century : Flemish and Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century from The Pierpont Morgan Library. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1979, under no. 124.
Jane Shoaf Turner, with contributions by Felice Stampfle, Dutch Drawings in the Pierpont Morgan Library: Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries, New York, 2006, cat. no. 298.