This scene with a little farmhouse sheltered by some trees, a canal with a small, moored boat and a cow drinking at the water’s edge would be a quintessentially Dutch landscape, were it not for the rocky escarpment behind the building and the hills in the distance. Rembrandt took familiar motifs, such as a langhuis and the canal, and placed them in a more picturesque landscape. He may have seen and sketched the building and the canal near Diemen, where this type of building is common (see: Schneider, 1990, p. 155; and Hinterding, 2008, p. 448), while the mountainous scenery was probably inspired by Bruegel or Goltzius, who unlike Rembrandt had traveled south, or by the dramatic landscapes of Hercules Seghers. Although he was personally unfamiliar with such places, Rembrandt in this small etching achieved a surprising harmony and continuity between the Dutch foreground and the more exotic background.
The Landscape with the Cow exists in two life-time states, with only a tiny change between the two: in the second state, Rembrandt added a few lines of shading to the meadow just to the right of the cow. Of the first state, only ten impressions are known in public collections.