Art, literature & history
A Herdsman with Three Cows by an Upland Pool
mid-1780s
- Dating
- Within this decade
- Held at
- The Cleveland Museum of Art
- Medium
- watercolor, ink and oil paint heightened with white chalk ("Bristol lead white")
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 21.9 x 31.3 cm (8 5/8 x 12 5/16 in.)
- Collection no.
- 2006.156
- Attribution
- By the artist
- Image rights
- CC0 1.0License details
Thomas Gainsborough. A Herdsman with Three Cows by an Upland Pool. The Cleveland Museum of Art. CC0 1.0. Compressed full-frame reproduction.
Collection: The Cleveland Museum of Art
About this artwork
A Herdsman with Three Cows by an Upland Pool — Thomas Gainsborough. mid-1780s.
Medium: watercolor, ink and oil paint heightened with white chalk ("Bristol lead white"). Dimensions: Sheet: 21.9 x 31.3 cm (8 5/8 x 12 5/16 in.).
Collection record: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland. Museum connection according to this source; current display unverified.
Although he was one of the most celebrated society portraitists of his day, landscape painting was Thomas Gainsborough’s love and lifelong pleasure. Here, delicate layers of watercolor, ink, oil paint, and chalk result in a jewel-like work on paper. The composition combines the rural scene of a herdsman and three cows with an imagined, majestic mountain view, mingling the pastoral with the sublime. The sheet was among a group of 14 landscape drawings that Gainsborough selected as a gift for a close friend.
Source: official collection record. Metadata selected and normalized by Artline from the source export, accessed 10 September 2026; no museum endorsement. Reproduction rights are separate.
Location checked Sep 10, 2026. This does not indicate whether the work is on display.