Paul George Konody

“ Even the famous “Equestrian Portrait of Tulp” in the Six collection, Amsterdam, is awkward and stiff and hard in handling. His animals are designed with careful accuracy, while the landscape backgrounds are introduced with spirit and appropriateness. His colour is clear and transparent, his execution firm and finished without being laboured. His view of nature is purely objective and unemotional ”

“ The earliest dated picture of importance is “Abraham Entering Into Canaan” (1642) , at the Germanic Museum in Nuremberg, in which he makes the Scriptural subject an excuse for painting the patriarch's herds, just as in his “Orpheus” of 1650 (Rijks Museum, Amsterdam) he makes similar use of the Greek myth. Among his finest works on a small scale are a cattle piece (1653) in the Duc d'Arenberg's collection, and a similar, though earlier, picture in the Munich Pinakothek. In spite of his early death Paul Potter produced a great number of works. ”

“ He worked with feverish application, as though he were aware of the short span of life that was granted him. He executed a series of some twenty etchings, mainly of animals, which are simple and direct in method and handling. Here, as in painting, his precocity was remarkable: his large plate of the “Herdsman,” produced when he was only eighteen, and that of the “Shepherd,” which dates from the following year, show him at his best as an accomplished master of the point. ”