The Red Cow

From Lawton and Merrill, Freer: A Legacy of Art, pp. 193-94:
In 1908, when he was at Cottier and Company in New York buying a Persian ceramic bowl, Freer picked up a dark, indistinct barnyard scene called The Red Cow, one of the earliest extant paintings by Albert Pinkham Ryder. Although Ryder's reputation was on the rise in 1908, his paintings were not yet in great demand, and Freer bought The Red Cow at a fraction of the cost he customarily paid for American works.  His purchase may have been influenced by his friend John Gellatly, who possessed a parallel taste in American art and a collection that grew to include fifteen Ryder paintings in addition to a large number of works by Dewing and Thayer.  Freer himself knew practically nothing about Ryder's work--he told the dealer he felt more confident about West Asian pottery--and because he remained uncertain whether The Red Cow, like the Persian bowl, should occupy a permanent place in his collection, he took it "on probation." There is nothing to suggest, however, that Freer ever considered parting with the painting.  Seeing it at home with his collection, he may have found its warm colors and densely painted, crackled surface comparable to his glazed ceramic pots, or its dreamlike atmospheric quality relevant to other of his American paintings that were drawn in the same way from shadowy recollections.