Cattle drinking from a stream by Philipp Peter Roos

Philipp Peter Roos was a German painter and engraver, nicknamed "Rosa di Tivoli" because he settled there around 1684. He bought a house that his friends called "Noah's Ark", as he bought a number of animals that he studied meticulously in drawings and paintings. Thanks to his perfect imitation of nature, he became the best-known animal painter of his time.

Philipp Peter Roos left to study in Rome at the age of twenty, thanks to a grant awarded to him by Landgrave Ernst von Hessen-Kassel in 1677. In Italy, Roos worked in the studio of the painter Giacinto Brandi and made a living by painting small landscapes for tourists. In his compositions, all the attention is focused on the animals depicted in the most varied poses.

Because of his virtuoso and rapid technique, his nickname within the "Schildersbent", the association of northern painters from Holland, Flanders and Germany in Rome, is "Mercurius". The members of the Schildersben, a society of painters founded in or around 1623, were all active in Rome and were known as the "Bentvueghels" ("group of birds"). The association soon became known for its rather convivial gatherings, to the extent that in 1720 this merry society was banned by papal decree because too many parties ended in great disorder.

Philipp Peter Roos belonged to the third generation of painters who came from the North to paint in Italy in the last quarter of the 17th century. While in the first generation (Cornelis van Poelenburgh, Bartholomeus Breenbergh and Pieter van Laer, around 1620-1630), there was no difference between the artistic output produced in Rome and that produced at home, in the second generation (Jan Both, Jan Asselijn, Nicolaes Berchem, Jan Baptist Weenix, Adam Pynacker and Karel Dujardin, from 1640) stood out, then the third generation (Johannes Glauber, Jan-Frans van Bloemen and Hendrick van Lint) settled permanently in Rome, without returning to their country of origin.

According to Arnold Houbraken(Groote Schouburgh der nederlantsche Konstschilders, 1719), Philipp Peter Roos painted a very large number of pictures, which he almost never signed or dated, making it difficult to establish a chronology of his works. The specialist on the artist (Hermann Jedding, Johann Heinrich Roos, 1998, pp. 191-228), believes that Philipp Peter Roos began by painting small canvases with few animals in the 1680s, then moved on to larger paintings with more livestock and a shepherd around 1690. Finally, towards the end of his life, he painted large canvases, sometimes over two metres wide, panoramic landscapes with animals, sometimes adding crowded horses or a single ox.

The pair of canvases on display at the Château de Champs-sur-Marne belong to this monumental decorative production, circa 1700. Thematically, the two paintings with sheep, goats and oxen are similar to works executed around 1690-95, which regularly come up for sale.