Horses and Goats in a Stable

The painting is of the interior of an ancient building used as a stable, similar to the ones that the painter probably saw in Rome and the surrounding countryside. The view through the huge arch on the left is of a cloudy sky, a large tree and a piece of countryside stretching up to a line of hills. In the centre of the composition, a number of horses are eating hay. On the left, two people are in conversation; the boy wearing a hat points to something in the distance, while the groom begins to saddle the darkest horse. On the right are some goats and in the background, a figure.
The painting is typical of Pieter van Bloemen’s late work. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, he took some of the themes often handled by the Bamboccianti in Rome and adapted them to a Flemish and Dutch model. These included animals grazing or fording a river, horses at the post house or the forge, and figures that he had rarely depicted large-sized before then. The Flemish painter’s interest in these aspects influenced his better-known brother Jan Frans van Bloemen, who specialized in landscape painting.