A landscape can be completely invented and still feel more real than reality. That is the mystery at the heart of Paulus Potter's art. Nearly four centuries after the young Dutch master painted this remarkable view from memory, the fields, skies, trees and animals that shaped his imagination continue to echo across the countryside around Leiden.
What begins in front of a painting becomes a search through farms, canals, grazing fields and winding country roads. Along the way, cows seem to step out of the frame, poplars sway exactly as Potter painted them, and an imagined landscape starts to feel surprisingly tangible. Somewhere between observation and invention lies the quality that makes great art endure: the ability to persuade us that a place we've never seen is somehow already familiar.
This idyllic landscape is on offer in the Old Master & 19th Century Paintings and Sculpture Evening Auction taking place at Sotheby's London on 1 July.
