Cattle Crossing shows four cattle wading through a shallow, sunlit stream, moving across the picture from right to left. The animals are seen close to and near full length, arranged in a line that fills most of the width of the board: a pale ochre beast at the front with its head lowered towards the water. Their legs break the surface of the water, which runs in pale blue, white and warm brown around them, with the stony bed showing through in the foreground. Bright green bankside growth rises at the left and again at the upper right, and the far bank in the top left is painted in warm brown earth. Light falls from the right, catching the backs and flanks of the cattle and the ripples at their feet. The paint is worked thickly and directly, with the cattle built from loaded strokes that follow the run of their coats, warm ochres and browns against cooler grey and violet in the shaded undersides. The water is laid in with broken horizontal and vertical marks, its blue and white broken by touches of orange and brown where the bed and reflections come through. The green foliage at the edges is set down in separate, drier flicks of paint. The low, raking light is carried in the pale highlights along the animals' backs and across the disturbed water.