The Ford

genre

This painting is a tribute to the fertility and the ease of summer. One milkmaid is bathing at the water's edge while another follows her cattle through the ford. There may well be some sort of in-joke between the classical stance of this woman, elegantly balancing her milk can on her head, and the pissing cow at her side.

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About the Artist

Jan Siberechts

1627 – 1703

Flemish landscape painter who settled in England in the early 1670s. His landscapes are somewhat Rubensian, but he is best known for his "portraits" of English country houses, done in a simple, rather archaic manner; two views of Longleat, Wiltshire (1675 and 1676), are still preserved in the house. He was the first professional exponent of the genre.

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