Through an intimate, shadowy atmosphere, The Cow transports the viewer to cold mountain stables, where the light of an oil lamp reveals the mystery of everyday rural rituals. The artist evokes an almost biblical vision of the scene, stripped of artifice, in which the central figure—barely illuminated—merges with the animal’s shadow, distinguished only by the warm glow of the hands and the milking implement.
In the artist’s own words:
“At nightfall, in the stables of cold mountain retreats, milking takes on, by the light of an oil lamp, the mystery of natural things that we scarcely understand, however familiar they may be. Our contemplation carries us back to biblical times, for the scene I depict would need only the cowherd’s boot changed into a sandal. […] It is the mystique of age-old acts that the human soul resists surrendering to mechanisation […] scarcely to be grasped by a generation in transition that once knew the poetry of simplicity and naturalness.”
Note:
The sketch was made at “Can Rovireta” (Sant Esteve de Palautordera, Barcelona), a place the painter often visited and which inspired part of his work depicting everyday life and local customs.
V. de Espona