Andalusian school of the mid-19th century. Circle of ANDRÉS CORTÉS AGUILAR (Seville, 1812 - 1879). "Pastoral Scene". Oil on canvas. With faults and restorations. Frame with live woodworm. Measurements: 97 x 139 cm; 112,5 x 155 cm (frame). The work in question falls within the circle of Andrés Cortés Aguilar, a prolific 19th century Andalusian painter specialising in landscapes with herds, a genre in which he would become one of the most outstanding painters of his time, and which defines a large part of his production. Born to a painter father, Andrés Cortés produced a prolific and highly personal oeuvre, although little precise information is known about his life. His father, Antonio Cortés, lived in France and had been a pupil of the landscape painter and animal painter Constantin Troyon, which undoubtedly influenced Andrés Cortés s preference for landscapes with herds of cattle from his first artistic steps with his father. He also stood out as a great landscape painter of Sevillian genre painting, with works in which he was particularly influenced by the 17th-century Dutch masters, something that was common among the Sevillian landscape painters of the time. But what finally brought him recognition in the art world was his friendship with his great patron, the Basque industrialist J. M. Ybarra y Gutiérrez, the future Count of Ybarra, who commissioned numerous works from him. Cortés painted other Sevillian views of equally ambitious composition, although he was chiefly known for his rural landscapes with flocks. He also painted a number of portraits, historical subjects and religious scenes, and was an interesting type painter, of which "El tío Gamboa de Hinojos" (private collection) is a good example. Andrés Cortés is represented in the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, the Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza and Bellver collections, the Romantic Museum in Madrid, the former palace of the Marqués de la Vega-Inclán, Seville Town Hall, the Carmen Thyssen Museum in Malaga and the Museum of Art and Culture in Granada, as well as in various private collections and parish churches such as Santa María la Coronada in Cadiz and San Roque in Gibraltar.