The artwork, titled “Bathers Disturbed by a Bull,” was created by the artist David Cox in the year 1853. It belongs to the Romanticism art movement and is categorized as genre painting.
In the artwork, a dramatic scene unfolds by a water body, where the presence of a bull disrupts the tranquil activities of the bathers. The landscape is divinely depicted with expansive skies, a distant horizon, and a tree swaying by the edge of the water. The bull stands partially immersed in the water, creating a sense of intrusion and tension. Bathers are captured in various states of distress and hurried action; one man attempts to scale a tree, another hurriedly bends down as if picking something up, while a third stands near the edge of the water. The overall composition invokes a sense of urgency and surprise amidst an otherwise serene natural setting, characteristic of the Romanticism movement’s emphasis on the sublime and dramatic elements of nature and human experience.
