Emile van Marcke was a French

French people

The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...

 cattle painter, born at Sèvres

Sèvres

Sèvres is a commune in the southwestern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the centre of Paris.The town is known for its porcelain manufacture, the Manufacture nationale de Sèvres, making the famous Sèvres porcelain, as well as being the location of the International Bureau of Weights...

, Hauts-de-Seine

Hauts-de-Seine

Hauts-de-Seine is designated number 92 of the 101 départements in France. It is part of the Île-de-France region, and covers the western inner suburbs of Paris...

.

He studied under Troyon

Constant Troyon

Constant Troyon , French painter, was born in Sèvres, near Paris, where his father was connected with the famous manufactory of porcelain....

 at Barbizon

Barbizon school

The Barbizon school of painters were part of a movement towards realism in art, which arose in the context of the dominant Romantic Movement of the time. The Barbizon school was active roughly from 1830 through 1870...

. He received the cross of the Legion of Honor in 1872 and a gold medal at the Paris exhibition. He is represented at the Louvre and other museums of France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

, and at the Metropolitan Museum

Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...

 in New York

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida, and in other public and private collections in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. Typical of his work is the public domain image "Summer Pastoral, Bresle Valley" on this page reproduced courtesy of the Morton Collection. This gem-like work offers the favorite themes of van Marcke in a microcosm; it incorporates cattle, water, reflections, dramatic cloudscape

Cloudscape (art)

In art, a cloudscape is the depiction of a view of clouds or the sky. Usually, as in the examples seen here, the clouds are depicted as viewed from the earth, often including just enough of a landscape to suggest scale, orientation, weather conditions, and distance...

s and a feeling of life and motion and verdant nature. Nature is idyllic and animals emblematic of that harmony.