Shepherd with His Flock

c. 1820

Jean-Victor Bertin

Painter, French, 1767 - 1842

Sun drenches a landscape with trees, grassy hills, and rocky cliffs in this horizonal painting. In the lower right quadrant of the composition, a person with pale skin and wearing a mauve-purple tunic walks toward us on a wide walkway paved with oversized ochre-yellow blocks. The person, presumably a shepherd, braces a staff over one shoulder, and a flock of more than a dozen sheep and two dogs follow. Two trees with straight trunks and roughly oval-shaped canopies rise along the left edge of the canvas to nearly reach the top corner. Grass-carpeted hills lined with more trees roll back and away toward a trickling stream that winds through the middle distance. Rocky cliffs jutting steeply up are outlined against the pale blue sky beyond. A few brown structures are enclosed by a wall on the top of the cliff. On the left half of the composition, hills continue back to mountains that are hazy blue along the horizon, which comes less than halfway up this composition. A few puffy white clouds bob across the otherwise clear sky.

Media Options

This object’s media is free and in the public domain. Read our full Open Access policy for images.

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Gift of Frank Anderson Trapp

  • Dimensions

    overall: 21 x 30.5 cm (8 1/4 x 12 in.)
    framed: 34.6 x 46 x 7.6 cm (13 5/8 x 18 1/8 x 3 in.)

  • Accession

    2004.166.3


Artwork history & notes

Provenance

(James Mackinnon, London); purchased March 1998 by Frank Anderson Trapp [1922-2005], Pittsburgh; gift 2004 to NGA.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1998

  • Paintings and Sketches 1780-1870, James Mackinnon (London) at W.M. Brady & Co., Inc., New York, 1998, no. 7, repro.

Wikidata ID

Q20184509


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