Where Is The Young Bull? See It at Mauritshuis

Q: Where can I see The Young Bull?

This famous work hangs at the Mauritshuis in The Hague, Netherlands. The intimate museum is known for Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring and holds excellent Dutch Golden Age paintings.

Paulus Potter completed this monumental canvas in 1647, when he was just 22 years old. A massive young bull dominates the composition, rendered in life-size scale with extraordinary anatomical precision. Sheep, a cow, and a farmer fill the pastoral scene beneath a cloudy Dutch sky.

The painting shocked 17th-century viewers with its unprecedented size for an animal subject (235.5 × 339 cm). Potter heightened the humble cow to heroic status, a bold move in the Dutch Golden Age. Now at the Mauritshuis in The Hague, where it remains a star attraction.

This famous work hangs at the Mauritshuis in The Hague, Netherlands. The intimate museum is known for Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring and holds excellent Dutch Golden Age paintings.

The canvas measures a notable 235.5 × 339 cm (nearly 8 × 11 feet), making the central bull essentially life-sized. Potter was only 22 when he completed this ambitious work, which became his work.

Potter's technical skill and audacious scale made this a sensation. Painting farm animals at life size was unprecedented, and his precise rendering of texture, anatomy, and atmosphere heightened humble livestock to monumental art.

The Young Bull

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Where to See It

The Artist

Also at Mauritshuis

Woman Writing A Letter

Still life with a burning candle

Girl eating oysters

Mother Combing the Hair of Her Child

Related Dutch Golden Age Works

The Storm on the Sea of Galilee

Girl with the Red Hat

Woman Holding a Balance

Bathsheba at Her Bath

Girl with a Pearl Earring

The Lacemaker

Woman Reading a Letter

The Night Watch

About The Young Bull

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