Demand for Cooper's his finest works resulted in the practice, common to many comtemporary artists, of producing duplicate versions. The present composition, previously confused with the original exhibit, is another version identical in size, of In the Meadows at Curfew Hour, no.301 in the Royal Academy exhibition of 1892.

Cooper generally modified the detail slightly in the commissioned versions, sometimes on the client's specific instructions, and in this work a cow standing behind the central bull has been omitted while a cow lying down with its back to the viewer, on the far left, has been replaced with another facing forward. The landscape, with a cow drinking from the pollard-lined river, remains very similar. In a further version of the same work on a slightly reduced scale, A Bull and four Cows sold in these Rooms 20 April 1901, lot 144, the indentical group is included, with the reintroduction of the original cow far left, but in a significantly different landscape setting. The dominant short-horn bull in all these works obviously proved very popular and is included in other located paintings of this period, most notably in Cooper's Royal Academy exhibit of the following year, 1893, no.186, In the Fordwich Meadows, East Kent.

We are grateful to Kenneth J. Westwood for his help in preparing this catalogue entry.