Landscape with a Flood and Peasants Rescuing Cattle

Landscape with a Flood and Peasants Rescuing Cattle is a replica oil painting created around 1680 by Dutch artist Abel Grimmer. The painting depicts a rural landscape scene with peasants rescuing their cattle during a flood and can be understood as an allegory of the passing of autumn.
The scene is typical of 17th-century Dutch landscape paintings, with a panoramic vista showing a village in the mid-distance, distant hills, and an expansive, moody sky. Grimmer imbues the painting with drama through the kindling light, dark clouds, and agitated movement of the cattle struggling in the floodwaters. The peasants wade into the flood, attempting to guide the animals to safety.
Through this rural scene of turmoil and loss, Grimmer sought to evoke the changing seasons and cycles of life and death – a common allegorical theme in Baroque art. The autumnal colors of the landscape, golden light, and turbulence of the flood suggest the ebb of a bountiful year and foreshadow the imminent arrival of winter.
Landscape with a Flood and Peasants Rescuing Cattle demonstrates Grimmer’s mastery of emotion and allegory within the genre of landscape painting. Other notable oil paintings by Grimmer include Tower of Babel, Mary and Joseph Halting at an Inn, and Carrying the Cross.
Lovers of Dutch Golden Age art can bring home a reproduction of this moving allegorical landscape through a museum quality replica oil painting or commissioning a custom painting inspired by Grimmer’s divine vision of the natural world.