Barend Cornelis Koekkoek artwork • statue • sculpture • for sale Lidded box with cows in riverlandscape

This small, round box is unique and a collector's item. Why? Small, painted lidded boxes were generally beloved objects throughout the centuries for their aesthetic or emotional value. People bought them to add to a collection of small, precious items or to store something special. But this box is special because its lid was painted in 1838 by Barend Cornelis Koekkoek, then one of the most famous landscape painters in the Netherlands. With a delicate brush, he painted a Dutch landscape of lush green meadows, a wide canal with ships, and prosperous cows on a lid measuring 7.2 cm in diameter. Ingredients that had brought wealth to many 19th-century people and of which the Dutch were proud. Presumably, the miniature painting was commissioned.