Two Bulls Fighting

Paulus Potter enjoyed great popularity as an animal painter and etcher. Other contemporary artists, like Aelbert Cuyp, also specialized in animals, and few Baroque Dutch landscapes were devoid of livestock. Yet Potter demonstrated his particularly close observation of the beasts—hooves, shaggy fur, limpid eyes, and all. Like his most famous painting, a lifesize portrait of a prize bull, this etching celebrates the fighting bulls’ physicality. Potter’s career was brilliant, but brief, for he died of tuberculosis before he turned 30.