Claude Lorrain

When the dealer Hans Calmann acquired Claude's Animal Album at sale in 1957, it had purportedly been kept intact in the Odescalchi family in Rome since at least the eighteenth century. Calmann dismantled the album and sold the 64 sheets individually. This study of a cow was no. 41 in the album. Dealer Eugene Thaw acquired it, and several other sheets from the album, near the start of his long career as a collector of old master drawings, at a time when modest purchases were still a stretch. Roethlisberger suggested the confident penwork may indicate a later date than most of the sheets in the album, which were executed ca. 1635-45.