In 19th-century England, affluent farmers commissioned paintings of their cows, pigs, and sheep as a display of their wealth and social status. These extravagant paintings portrayed animals with exaggerated shapes - pigs resembling overinflated footballs, cows stretched into rectangular forms, and sheep elongated into ovals. During this era, farmers engaged in selective breeding and embraced new feeding techniques to cultivate larger livestock, in response to a national effort to secure a stable food supply for a growing population.