
Read the visual description
Two men hold the mouth of a horse open to work on its teeth as a third, short boy or man looks on in front of a building to our left, where a blacksmith works in this vertical painting. All the people have peach-colored skin. A dark horse with a white stripe down its nose stands in a small, shed-like enclosure covered with a peaked roof, which is attached to the brick blacksmith’s shop. A balding man with a white beard and fringe of white hair, and wearing glasses, a tattered crimson-red shirt, and dark pants, holds a long, rod-like instrument in the horse’s gaping mouth. A hat lies on the ground near his feet. The man next to him is cleanshaven and wears a tall hat, a dark jacket with red sleeves, and dark pants and boots. He stands facing the horse with his mouth and eyes wide open. The horse’s nose is caught in long-handled, vice-like tongs, presumably to make the horse show its teeth. A noticeably shorter man or boy stands behind the pair, to our right, and looks on. He wears a tall, floppy hat, and his dark clothes are worn. His face is deep in shadow under the hat but he might have a mustache and beard. A white horse stands with its rump angled toward us behind the trio. Almost lost in shadow, a wide-shouldered man works on a hot piece of metal, glowing orange, next to a fire just inside the doorway to the building. Charcoal-gray smoke pours from a chimney on the roof. One dog lies down in front of the door and another frolics nearby. A chicken and a rooster peck at the dirt ground to our right. The horizon of the tree-lined landscape comes about a quarter of the way up the composition, and cream-colored, puffy clouds float across a blue sky above. Two people stands near a cow in the deep distance, near the trees.
National Gallery of Art · Painting
A Farrier's Shop
Paulus Potter
- Date
- 1648
- Medium
- oil on panel
- Dimensions
- overall: 48.3 x 45.7 cm (19 x 18 in.) framed: 71.12 × 68.58 × 7.62 cm (28 × 27 × 3 in.)
- Classification
- Painting
- Accession number
- 1942.9.52
- Credit line
- Widener Collection
- Time span
- 1601 to 1650
- Department
- CNE-B
Subjects and terms
- painted surface
- Baroque
- Dutch
- occupation
- genre
- Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century (NGA Online Editions)
- Farrier
Provenance
Dominique Bertrand Clemens, Ghent; (his sale, Salle de la Confrerie de Saint George, Ghent, 23 September 1777 and days following, no. 49; bought in). his brother, Jacques Clemens, canon of St. Bavo's Cathedral [1713-1779], Ghent; (his sale, Maison Mortuaire, Ghent, 21 June 1779 and days following, no. 212); Neijman, Amsterdam. Johan Philip de Monté, Utrecht; his widow; (her sale, A. Lamme, Rotterdam, 4-5 July 1825, no. 1); (Lambert Jean Nieuwenhuys, Brussels).[1] Comte François-Alexandre-Charles Perregaux [1791-1837], Paris; (his estate sale, Galerie Le Brun, Paris, 8-9 December 1841, no. 26); George. Madame Autran, Marseille, by 1867. (Charles Sedelmeyer, Paris), in 1898. M. Rodolphe Kann [d. 1905], Paris and Marseilles, by 1900; purchased 1907 with the entire Kann collection by (Duveen Brothers, Inc., London, New York, and Paris); sold 1909 to Peter A.B. Widener, Lynnewood Hall, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania; inheritance from Estate of Peter A.B. Widener by gift through power of appointment of Joseph E. Widener, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania; gift 1942 to NGA. [1] An annotated copy of the De Monté sale catalogue states that Nieuwenhuys purchased the picture for 7,100 guilders. For a discussion of the sale and L.J. Nieuwenhuys' purchase of the work, see Charles J. Nieuwenhuys, _A Review of the Lives and Works of Some of the Most Eminent Painters_, London, 1834, 186-188.
Inscription
center left in transom frame above doorway: paulus potter f. 1648
NGA object ID 1191. Collection metadata is reproduced under CC0. This work is included because its NGA published-image record is marked open access; visitors should recheck the source record before substantial reuse.