Landscape with Cattle

Joseph Roos (1726–1805) (?). 1756

Oil on wood

In the lower right corner of the painting, one can clearly see the signature Berghem and below it the date 1756. The signature refers to the well-known 17th-century Dutch artist Nicolaes Berchem, who used the spelling Berghem on his earlier works of the 1640s-1650s. However, the date on the painting does not fit with the signature, because Berchem, who was known in Haarlem for his Italian-style pastoral landscapes, had by that time been dead for over seventy years. It is believed that the painting was not intended as a forgery, and that the authorship was forged later: this is proved by the date, as well as the fact that the name of the famous artist was added to the original layer of varnish. On the basis of a stylistic analysis, the painting has been attributed to the 18th-century Austrian artist Joseph Roos I, a representative of the famous Roos family of artists, who was appointed a professor of landscape painting at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts in 1765, and became the manager of the Imperial Picture Gallery of Vienna in 1769. The Roos dynasty was renowned for their idyllic Dutch-style landscapes with cattle.