Peter Paul Rubens, 'A Landscape with a Shepherd and his Flock', about 1638

A Landscape with a Shepherd and his Flock

Peter Paul Rubens

Not on display

About the work

Overview

Rubens has created the impression of a wide-open space by depicting a point of interest in the right foreground – the shepherd watching over his sheep – then using the strong diagonal lines of the river, the road, the edges of the clouds and the raking light to trick our eye. Like the shepherd, we are drawn into gazing out across the landscape, the elevated viewpoint giving the impression that we are seeing further into the distance.

Most of Rubens’s landscapes were made in the last five years of his life, on his new estate in the countryside of Brabant outside Antwerp. As well as evoking a view, his pictures allude to ideas of rural bliss derived from classical authors. Rubens was doing more than reflecting a contemporary pastoral scene – he was demonstrating his literary learning and, by implication, elevating the countryside of his native land to the same cultural status as that of Roman Italy and Ancient Greece.

In-depth

One of the challenges of landscape painting is achieving a convincing impression of space, distance, light and air. Here Rubens has produced the effect partly by depicting a point of interest in the right foreground – the shepherd watching over his sheep – then using the strong diagonal lines of the river, the road, the edges of the clouds and the raking light from the low sun to trick our eye. Like the shepherd, we are drawn into gazing out across the patchwork of fields and woodland, the elevated viewpoint giving the impression that we are seeing further into the distance.

Most of Rubens’s landscapes were made in the last five years of his life, when he spent more and more of his time on his new estate in the countryside of Brabant outside Antwerp. Unlike most of his paintings, they were made mostly for his own pleasure rather than as commercial commissions, and many were still in his possession when he died. One of his most famous is also in the National Gallery’s collection: An Autumn Landscape with a View of Het Steen in the Early Morning, which is named after his estate and depicts the house and the views across the surrounding countryside. This landscape is much smaller, but it depicts a similarly sweeping view. It is probably one of the last pictures he made before illness stopped him painting altogether around the end of 1638.

Most of Rubens’s landscapes were made in the last five years of his life, on his new estate in the countryside of Brabant outside Antwerp. As well as evoking a view, his pictures allude to ideas of rural bliss derived from classical authors, such as Horace and Virgil, in which shepherds, milkmaids or cowherds watch peacefully over their animals in an idyllic landscape. They expressed a poetic yearning for a simple life, free from the stresses of the city; it was an ideal which also seems to have resonated in seventeenth-century Holland and Flanders. In particular, the piping shepherd here has echoes of the Greek god Pan. So Rubens was doing more than reflecting a contemporary pastoral scene – he was demonstrating his literary learning, and, by implication, elevating the countryside of his native land to the same cultural status as that of Roman Italy and Ancient Greece.

To enhance the idyll, Rubens has depicted the sun breaking through the clouds just above the horizon. It has generally been assumed that this must represent a sunset, but there is nothing to indicate this definitively. While there are hints of pink on the clouds near the sun, they are not as strong we might expect of a late-summer sunset on a cloudy evening, and the white sheen on the distant fields, might be dew. This could conceivably be dawn – the time of day depicted in Het Steen.

The hat worn by the shepherd, with its wide, sweeping brim, is an unusually debonair one for a man of very moderate means. It is certainly of a more dashing style than those worn by country folk in paintings by Rubens’s Flemish contemporary Teniers, for example. But it is similar to the one worn by Rubens himself in a self portrait he made about ten years earlier (Rubenshuis, Antwerp). It might be fanciful to suggest that he was identifying personally with the shepherd in question, but there are parallels of which he was surely aware: this is a landscape which has inspired him to paint, just as it seems to inspire the shepherd to play his pipe.

Key facts

Details

Full title: A Landscape with a Shepherd and his Flock
Artist: Peter Paul Rubens
Artist dates: 1577 - 1640
Date made: about 1638
Medium and support: oil on wood
Dimensions: 49.4 × 83.5 cm
Acquisition credit: Bequeathed by Lord Farnborough, 1839
Inventory number: NG157
Location: Not on display
Collection: Main Collection
Previous owners: Charles Long, Baron Farnborough
Frame: 17th-century French Frame

Provenance

Perhaps P. P. Rubens (†) sale, Antwerp, 1640 (112). Perhaps coll. J. P. Happart, Antwerp († 1686). Perhaps coll. Everhard Jabach, Paris (1610–1695), and, by descent, coll. his widow and thence his grand‐daughter, Mme. Fourment, 1724. Coll. Dutartre, Paris, by 1787; Dutartre (†) sale, Paillet (Paris), 19 ff. March, 1804 (21) sold for 3,400 francs. Probably coll. the Hon. C. Long (later Lord Farnborough) by 1810; exh. by him at the B.I., 1815 (18); Lord Farnborough Bequest, 1839; exh. An Exhibition of Cleaned Pictures, The National Gallery, 1947/8 (55).

Additional information

Text extracted from the ‘Provenance’ section of the catalogue entry in Gregory Martin, ‘National Gallery Catalogues: The Flemish School: circa 1600–circa 1900’, London 1986; for further information, see the full catalogue entry.

Bibliography

1830

J. Smith, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish, and French Painters: In Which is Included a Short Biographical Notice of the Artists, with a Copious Description of Their Principal Pictures […], vol. 2, London 1830
1890

M. Rooses and J. Maes, L'œuvre de P. P. Rubens: Histoire et description de ses tableaux et dessins, vol. 3, Antwerp 1890
1898

J. Burckhardt, Erinnerungen aus Rubens, Basel 1898
1903

M. Rooses, De Oude Hollandsche en Vlaamsche meesters in den Louvre et in de National Gallery, Amsterdam 1903
1904

M. Rooses, Rubens, sa vie et ses oeuvres, trans. H. Child, London 1904
1905

A. Rosenberg, P. P. Rubens: Des Meisters Gemälde in 551 Abbildungen, ed. R. Oldenbourg, Stuttgart 1905
1909

E. Dillon, Rubens, London 1909
1922

R. Oldenbourg, Die flämische Malerei des XVII Jahrhunderts, Berlin 1922
1926

E. Keiser, Die Rubenslandschaft, Rudolstadt 1926
1927

C. Sterling, Les paysages de Rubens (Esquisse d'une étude), n.p. 1927-1928
1931

E. Kieser, 'Tizians und Spaniens Einwirkungen auf die späten Landschaften des Rubens', Münchner Jahrbuch der Bildenden Kunst, VIII, 1931, pp. 281-91
1936

A. Herrmann, Untersuchungen über die Landschaftsgemälde des Peter Paul Rubens, Berlin 1936
1939

A.J.H. Cornette, 'Petrus Paulus Rubens', in S. Leurs (ed.), Geschiedenis van de Vlaamsche Kunst, Antwerp 1939, vol. 2, pp. 647-742
1945

G. Glück, Die Landschaften von P. P. Rubens, Vienna 1945
1947

P. Hendy, An Exhibition of Cleaned Pictures of 1947: (1936-1947), London 1947
1959

J. Held, Rubens: Selected Drawings, London 1959
1970

G. Martin, The Flemish School, circa 1600-circa 1900, London 1970
1977

O. Millar, 'Rubens's Landscapes in the Royal Collection: The Evidence of X-Ray', The Burlington Magazine, CXIX/894, 1977, pp. 631-5
1979

A. Braham, Rubens, Themes and Painters in the National Gallery 8, London 1979
1980

J. Held, The Oil Sketches of Peter Paul Rubens: A Critical Catalogue, Princeton 1980
1982

W. Adler, Landscapes and Hunting Scenes, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard 18, vol. 1, Landscapes, London 1982
1982

L. Vergara, Rubens and the Poetics of Landscape, New Haven 1982
1986

Martin, Gregory, National Gallery Catalogues: The Flemish School, circa 1600 - circa 1900, London 1986
1987

C. White, Peter Paul Rubens: Man and Artist, New Haven 1987
1988

Y. Thiery, Les peintres flamands de paysage au XVIIe siècle: Des précurseurs à Rubens, Brussels 1988
1989

M. Jaffé, Rubens: Catalogo completo, Milan 1989
1996

O. von Simson, Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640): Humanist, Maler und Diplomat, Mainz 1996
1996

C. Brown, Rubens's Landscapes (exh. cat. The National Gallery, 16 October 1996 - 19 January 1997), London 1996
2000

C. Brown, 'The Construction and Development of Rubens's Landscapes: Reflections on the London Exhibition', in H. Vlieghe et al., Concept, Design and Execution in Flemish Painting (1550-1700), Turnhout 2000, pp. 267-278
2001

C. Baker and T. Henry, The National Gallery: Complete Illustrated Catalogue, London 2001
2001

T. Noll, '"Der sterbende Seneca" des Peter Paul Rubens: Kunsthistorisches und weltanschauliches Programmbild', Münchner Jahrbuch der Bildenden Kunst, LII/3, 2001, pp. 89-158
2008

K. Jonckheere, The Auction of King William's Paintings, 1713: Elite International Art Trade at the End of the Dutch Golden, Amsterdam 2008
2014

C. Kleinert, Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) and his Landscapes: Ideas on Nature and Art, Turnhout 2014
2016

E. Bergvelt and M. Jonker, Dutch and Flemish Paintings: Dulwich Picture Gallery, London 2016
2020

L. Davis, Rubens: The Two Great Landscapes, London 2020

About this record

If you know more about this painting or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.

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