A bull stands in a sunlit meadow beside a cow and sheep, while a farmer leans on a tree at left. Paulus Potter painted it in 1647 on a canvas more than three meters wide, and that was the novelty: no one had painted something as ordinary as a bull on such a grand scale before. Seams show that Potter first planned to paint only the bull, then added strips of linen 40 to 60 centimeters wide at the sides and top for the other animals, the farmer and the landscape. Despite the size, he lavished attention on tiny details: a lark in the sky, flies on the bull's back and the cow's whiskers. French troops took the painting to Paris in 1795, and it was recovered in 1815 after Napoleon's defeat.

It has hung in the Mauritshuis in The Hague again since 1822.