De la Rive gave up legal studies in order to study painting. He was largely self-taught studying Dutch master paintings from the collections of Jean-Jacques Sellon and François Tronchin and went to Italy in 1786 for a year and a half making copies and plein air sketches with fellow Swiss artists Jean-Pierre Saint Ours and Abraham-Louis-Rodolphe Ducros. In the present work, the depiction of the animals and the way they are placed in the landscape show the influence of the earlier Dutch painters he copied such as Philips Wouwermans and Nicolas Berchem. The composition is typical of De la Rive’s ‘composed landscapes’ which combine realistic elements of sketches made in the area around Lake Geneva with idealized elements bathed in an Italianizing southern light which he had observed in the works of Claude Lorrain.