'The Bull' by Paulus Potter: a serene eye for young and old

By way of a rare exception, I am donating an article this time about 'The Bull' by Paulus Potter (1625 – 1654), which was issued on a framed stamp on January 15, 2026. The reason? To mark the unveiling of the restored painting 'The Bull' by Paulus Potter in the period 2024 – 2025, PostNL, in collaboration with the Mauritshuis in The Hague, where the canvas has hung for some 200 years, issued the 'The Bull' stamp sheet on January 15, 2026.

The stamp sheet contains five different framed stamps depicting the cow, the oak, the farmer, the bull, and the sheep, consisting of the ram, the ewe, and the lamb. The willow is arranged in an x-frame with the oak in the foreground.

The small green frog on the ground in the center of the painting, barely noticeable, and the skylark in the air nevertheless draw attention thanks to bold yellow letters, which are also used in the same style on the framed stamps. What is striking here is that the text snippets are literally interwoven with the images by having a tree leaf or a cow's horn run over them.

Soothing and serene atmosphere
In the massive oil painting (236,5 x 341 cm) 'The Bull' by Paulus Potter (1625 – 1654), a life-sized bull is painted dominantly, with clearly visible minuscule details. The standing bull performs an activity in an almost sleeping, subdued, or calm posture, requiring little or no effort from the animal. Indeed, this soothing and serene appearance can be observed on several fragments of the painting (and stamp sheet).
The list of details below is (of course, along with countless other elements) clearly visible on the actual painting, and only partially on the stamps.

1) A lark, hovering motionless in the air on the rising warm thermals / air current.

2) and a green frog sitting in a jumping position in the foreground makes its presence known by croaking and attempts to attract females with it.

3) Lying and crawling flies above and on the back of the standing bull. In a win-win situation, the insects cooperate with the cattle in a natural / symbiotic partnership, in which both animals benefit due to food and protection.

4) The glowing wet nose with whiskers of the cow, lying quietly chewing its cud in the meadow after grazing.

5) The animals' fur is rendered in detail with thickly applied layers of paint.

6) On the recently shorn, lying dairy sheep, even the traces of the sheep shearing with scissors are still visible. With fine brushstrokes, the shortened, cut hairs of the fleece are even still visible. The lamb (lying against the mother ewe) seeks protection.

7) Like the cow, the goat is also a ruminant, chewing the cud for as much as eight hours a day (mostly while lying down) to process the grazed grass for proper digestion.

8) The bull itself is a separate story: the animal was assembled based on a number of sketches Potter had made of bulls of varying ages. The horns appear to be from a younger animal, as do the teeth. The shoulders are from an adult specimen, while the hindquarters belong to a young bull.

9) Initially, Potter painted only the bull. Later, the painter attached pieces of canvas to either side, allowing other elements to be added. To the left of the bull, in a meadow, stands a farmer by a fence beneath a willow and an oak (in an x-arrangement) with foliage and a number of animals. It is worth mentioning that Farmer Teun van Hoogeveen's reading board is based on that of Paulus Potter. To the right on the horizon, above the trees, the church tower of Rijswijk is visible, where the painter lived at the time. To the left in the foreground is a sunlit meadow with cows here and there.

Dynamic Baroque painting style
Paulus Potter's 'The Bull' belongs, along with Rembrandt's 'The Night Watch', to the Baroque painting style of the Golden Age. A similarity between the two paintings is their dynamism, which can be divided into one of particularly dynamic executions with numerous colorful elements, and one with limited color and calm, unobtrusive dynamics.