The plain-weave canvas support has been lined twice. There is no visible cusping. The beige ground layer is visible at the reserve for the shoulder of the shepherdess holding a bunch of grapes. The blue background was painted after the figures had been completed. The paint layers were applied in a relatively rough manner with much visible brushmarking.

Fair. The painting is slightly worn throughout. The numerous, small retouchings and the varnish are very discoloured.

...; collection Floris Adriaen van Hall (1838-1929), Utrecht and Amsterdam, 1894-1924;¹¹Utrecht 1894, no. 98; Von Wurzbach I, 1906, p. 711; Hoogewerff 1924, p. 13....; sale, Hendrik Deen (1862-1934, Hoevelaken), Hoevelaken (J.D. Lammerts van Bueren), 20 February 1935 sqq., no. 64;...; from Sophie Rodriguez, née de Jong (Brussels), fl. 1,000, to the Vereniging Rembrandt, for the museum, 1937; on loan to the Rijksmuseum Muiderslot, Muiden, since 1947

Object number: SK-A-3270

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

The pastoral genre in Dutch art was developed primarily in Utrecht in the 1610s and 20s, and the Caravaggist painters were in the forefront of the development.⁸⁸See McNeil Kettering 1983, p. 84; Van den Brink 1993, pp. 11-12; De Meyere 1993. Excluding his pastoral portraits, Honthorst’s work in this genre is concentrated between 1622 and 1632.⁹⁹See, especially, Judson/Ekkart 1999, pp. 159-61, 162-72, nos. 189, 193-213, pls. XIV, 103-10. Honthorst’s Shepherdess in Utrecht (Centraal Museum; Judson/Ekkart 1999, pp. 163-65, no. 193, pl. XXVII) is dated 1652, but was most likely actually executed in 1622. The present painting is the last in this group, and differs from the others in its extreme oblong format. It is this format, the use of half-length figures shown close to the picture plane, and the silhouetted repoussoir figure on the left that make this painting compositionally the most similar to the artist’s merry companies.

Pastoral scenes were particularly in vogue with the courtly circles in The Hague. In addition to the countless arcadian portraits that Honthorst executed for the courts of the King and Queen of Bohemia, and Frederik Hendrik and Amalia van Solms, many of his pastoral scenes are known to have hung in their palaces. The primary example is Honthorst’s 1625 Granida and Daifilo Surprised by Artabanus’ Soldiers, now in Utrecht, which hung in Frederik Hendrik’s country palace, Honselaarsdijk.¹⁰¹⁰Centraal Museum; Judson/Ekkart 1999, pp. 159-61, no. 189, pl. XIV. There is a distinct possibility that the Rijksmuseum’s Shepherd and Shepherdesses also decorated a palace. The low vantage point and oblong format warrant the idea that it was conceived as an overdoor.¹¹¹¹McNeil Kettering 1983, p. 90.

The scene is not based on a literary text, as are some of Honthorst’s arcadian pictures.¹²¹²See, for example, Granida and Daifilo Surprised by Artabanus’ Soldiers, Utrecht, Centraal Museum; Judson/Ekkart 1999, pp. 159-61, no. 189, pl. XIV. Nor does it seem to be an allegory.¹³¹³As, for example, Shepherdess with a Lute, Shepherd and Cupid, Switzerland, private collection: Judson/Ekkart 1999, pp. 168-70, no. 207, pl. XVI. The sensual nature of the painting has, nonetheless, led to at least one moralizing interpretation, whereby the bunch of grapes held by the bare-breasted shepherdess has been seen as a reference to the ‘Maechdenplicht’ (a maiden’s obligation to remain a virgin before marriage), while the reclining shepherdess with the extreme décolleté beside her is thought to be fending off the shepherd’s advances.¹⁴¹⁴Coll. cat. Muiden 1989, no. 23. However, the reclining shepherdess is clearly singing along to the shepherd’s piping, beating time with her left hand. In her right hand she apparently holds the text of their song. The fruit at her elbow and the grapes held by the bare-breasted shepherdess behind her may simply refer to nature’s fertility. Or, perhaps, Honthorst included this motif as a reference to Ovid’s story of the wood nymph Pomona, whose reluctance to be wooed was overcome by Vertumnus when he explained the grape vine and the elm tree’s need for each other.¹⁵¹⁵Metamorphoses XIV: 623-95. The painting’s original viewers would probably have been familiar with Ovid’s story, and quite possibly with depictions of Vertumnus and Pomona showing the latter holding a bunch of grapes.¹⁶¹⁶See, for example, Paulus Moreelse’s painting in Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen; Utrecht-Frankfurt 1993, p. 222, no. 41 (ill.). Rather than an exercise in moralization, the painting was probably intended to represent nothing more than a delightful pastoral romp.

Jonathan Bikker, 2007

See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements

This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 136.

Judson/Ekkart 1999, pp. 171-72, no. 211, with earlier literature

1976, p. 285, no. A 3270 (as Shepherd Playing the Flute, and Four Nymphs); 2007, no. 136

J. Bikker, 2007, 'Gerard van Honthorst, Shepherd Playing the Flute, and Four Shepherdesses, 1632', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200109795