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Thomas Gainsborough

A Herdsman with Three Cows by an Upland Pool

mid-1780s
watercolor, ink and oil paint heightened with white chalk ("Bristol lead white")

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In the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland · as of July 2026

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FROM THE CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART’S CATALOG

Following the instruction of the influential painter and writer Jonathan Richardson, Gainsborough often arranged his landscape compositions with the brightest passage—here, the white cow and billowing clouds—near the center.

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