Johannes Hubertus Leonardus de Haas, Before the Storm

by Atelier Liesjes

Three cows stand on a muddy path that runs from the bottom left towards the right, with a row of birch and poplar trees behind them, their foliage almost blackish-green. In the foreground on the left, a grey-brown cow grazes with her head buried deep in the grass; in the centre, a yellowish-brown cow with short horns looks straight at the viewer; on the right stands a large white cow with a black patch around her eye and along her neck, broad and heavy in the flanks. Behind the trees, the countryside stretches towards a low horizon, where in the distance another herd is still grazing and a few birds fly low overhead. Above it all hangs a heavy, brown-grey blanket of clouds, with a pale patch in the top left where the light breaks through and a narrow yellow streak on the horizon. De Haas chose the moment just before the storm breaks. The sky is heavy and dark, but on the white cow’s back there is still a warm, almost ivory-white light that makes her seem to step out of the picture. The paint is applied loosely and impasto-like, with short strokes in the foliage and longer strokes in the coat; the colours are closely related: umber, ochre, grey-green and off-white. The style is realist, akin to the Barbizon School and the livestock paintings of the Hague School, in which the animal is not a prop but the central figure. It is precisely this combination of tranquillity and menace that makes the work so compelling. Johannes Hubertus Leonardus de Haas (1832–1908) was a Dutch painter who devoted himself almost exclusively to livestock and landscape paintings. He preferred to work outdoors, come rain or shine, and studied his cows down to the folds of their skin and the position of their legs. His work was well received at the salons of his time and proved popular with collectors of rural genre painting.