Cattle exist in a transitional space between nature and here and there, by a squareness, which is very pictur culture. Domesticated for thousands of years and selectively esque.... Nor are the lines only of the cow more pictur breed for meat, milk, and docility, they are shaped by cul-esque, it has the advantage also in the filling up of those ture. Yet, ideally, roaming the countryside and feeding at lines. If the horse be sleek especially, and have, what the jock will, they are also nature. Since the 18th century, agricul-ies call, a fine coat, the smoothness of the surface is not so well tural technologies intersecting with economics and aesthet-adapted to receive the spirited touches of the pencil, as the ics reshaped the physical appearance and material body of rougher form and coat of the cow.(253) Gilpin prefers the cattle and their cultural signification as part of the pictur-roughness of cattle, the sharp edges, boxy shape, rugged esque. From 1710 to 1795, cattle, as beef, nearly doubled in coats and even recommends the proper coloring, the num size (Youatt 257). This beefing up of beef had an aesthetic ber, and grouping for landscape painting. Gilpin's observa dimension, depicted in the many cattle portraits which pro-tions on technical details—including the size and shape of jected an artistic ideal toward which grazeirs were also breed-the head, chest, and shoulders of cattle (255)—coincides ing their animals. Finally, Jenner's cure for smallpox, a with characteristics William Youatt describes in The Complete cross-species infection involving cattle and humans de-cen-Grazier (19) to judge the value of cattle, tered the human, or at least the humanity of the human, the techne and poesis expressed in the cultural manipulation of Given the geography of Gilpin's last chapter, the sub the agri-cultural. ject of drawing cattle is appropriate. Some twenty years before, Robert Bakewell made the Leicester region fam William Gilpin's rules for painting in Observations on by his innovative breeding practices a Cumberland and Westmoreland convey the poesis of cattle. After Derby, where his experiments describing the Lake District scenery and advising how to or-and contributed to a British agricu ganize it into the picturesque, Gilpin moves south through prove the form, flesh, and propensit Derby and takes up drawing animals within the picturesque developed" in-in" breeding, breeding landscape. Specifically, he recommends cattle more suited to family lineage. By mating close rela picturesque drawing than horses:" In the first place, the lines the purity of the line, and, if an of the horse are round and smooth; and admit little variety: standards, eliminated it from the b whereas the bones of the cow are high, and vary the line, ideal type to breed toward allowed Bak