Gaspard Dughet, 'Landscape with a Cowherd', about 1637

A herdsman waves a stick at his cattle to encourage them to move towards the stream. This painting is unlikely to have a literary source, but was once thought to show the mythological subject of Mercury and Io or Jupiter and Io. Io was one of Jupiter’s mortal lovers, and was transformed into a white cow after Juno, his wife, discovered his infidelity. However, the man we see here has none of the attributes of Mercury, who is commonly shown wearing winged sandals and hat, and no cowherd appears in the story.

This picture is now attributed to Gaspard Dughet, although it was acquired by the National Gallery as a work by Nicolas Poussin, in whose studio Dughet worked until 1635. Probably painted around 1637, this is one of Dughet’s early works. The pastoral scene is inspired by the countryside near Rome, where Dughet spent most of his career.

There are aspects of the painting that show Dughet was still perfecting certain skills: he has used clumsy paint dots, dashes and lines to convey the leaves and branches of the trees, and the cowherd’s pose is awkward. However, we can see the beginning of his talent for creating perspective and his technique of overlapping darker green and yellow tones with lighter ones to avoid the trees appearing flat.

The foreground scene is framed by trees. Their curved trunks lead our eye into the centre of the composition and towards the distant buildings – the domed roof and obelisk recall the architecture of Rome. The river, its rocky banks and the hills beyond are arranged in a zigzag formation that finishes at the mountains, which are painted blue to reflect the way that colour appears to change as we look into the distance.