A Smith shoeing an Ox

Bright blue sky and a sun-drenched rustic rooftop are separated, by a bold diagonal line of shadow, from the action taking place below. In a dusty yard, a glimpse of a bright white stocking draws the eye to the farrier, who bends to hammer a new shoe onto the hoof of the patient ox. Watched by a pair of chickens delicately balanced on the cart, the customer in a wide-brimmed hat casually chats to the farrier’s diminutive assistant, perhaps a child, whose hand is ready at his tool bag. The doorway into the house beyond is marked with the sign of the horseshoe. Amid the darkness within sits the master blacksmith, whose arm is raised, about to bring the hammer down. The glow of the furnace is rendered with a few streaks of white and yellow paint, illuminating another child, their wide eyes turned towards the blacksmith’s noisy work. The chimney above, from which wisps of grey escape, draws the smoke up from the furnace below.

Dutch artist Karel Dujardin (1626-78) forged a career producing genre paintings of rural life, often featuring cattle or sheep, tended by peasants in imagined countryside settings. While many of his paintings portrayed locations that would be familiar to Dutch art collectors, in this painting the architecture and clothing indicate a more Italian style of setting. Dujardin’s skills lay in the characterful and accurate depictions of animals, as here, where it is the ox that steals the show.