The Shepherdess

The support is a moderately fine, plain-weave canvas that has been lined. Cusping is present on all four sides. The ground has an ochre colour. The paint layers were applied in a broad manner with quite visible brushmarking. A blue pigment has become visible through the white apron covering the shepherdess’s right knee, suggesting that a change was made here during painting.

Fair. Two vertical impressions, one running through the head of the young billy-goat and the other through the head of the young boy, have been made by the stretcher. Two small, confined areas of cupping in the ground and paint layers are apparent in the tree at the upper left and the shepherdess’s hat. Her blue skirt is quite abraded, and there are some discoloured retouchings, such as the face of the young boy and above the head of the billy-goat. The varnish has blanched and is discoloured.

...; from the Jacobson Gallery, London, fl. 1,000, to the museum, December 1898¹¹The painting was paid for by D. Wesselink, the leaseholder of the museum restaurant, where the painting came to hang. Verslagen 1898, p. 10.

ObjectNumber: SK-A-1793

The Rijksmuseum’s Shepherdess from 1628 is a mirror-image variation of a painting Cuyp executed the previous year (fig. a). In addition to reversing the placement of the shepherdess and child in the Rijksmuseum painting, Cuyp added a ram and a young billy-goat in the foreground and a view of Dordrecht in the background. Cuyp seems to have worked out some of these changes in a black chalk drawing now in Darmstadt (fig. b). The dog in this drawing is placed behind the shepherdess as in the 1627 painting, but the direction of the figure, the ambiguous arrangement of her legs and her costume (in particular the slashed puffs at her shoulder) are the same as the present painting. The shepherdesses occupy the entire height of both paintings. A strip of canvas had been added to the top of the earlier painting, but was removed in a recent restoration.⁶⁶The strip was probably added sometime before 1818, as the Dordrecht painting is most likely the one described in a Paris sale catalogue from that year with dimensions (c. 129 x 178 cm) that come close to those of the Dordrecht work with the added strip of canvas: sale, Michalon, Paris (Henry), 30 March 1818 sqq., no. 103 (‘Une femme, la houlette en main et coiffée d’un chapeau de paille, garde un nombreux troupeau de brebis; près d’elle est un enfant qui lui fait sentir un bouquet de jonquilles. Plus loin, un villageois s’occupe à ensemenser son champ. Sur toile, h. 48, l. 66.’). With thanks to Jos Deuss, Dordrechts Museum, Dordrecht. The suggestion that the Rijksmuseum painting has been cut down at the top is unwarranted, as broad cusping is present here.⁷⁷See Technical notes. Kloek (in Dordrecht 2002, p. 96) suggested that the Rijksmuseum painting has probably been somewhat reduced in size. Significantly, the Darmstadt shepherdess also occupies the entire height of the drawing.

Cuyp derived the composition of his two paintings of a shepherdess and child from Abraham Bloemaert, whose Pastoral Scene of 1627⁸⁸Hannover, Niedersächsische Landesgalerie; illustrated in Roethlisberger/Bok 1993, II, fig. 622. and undated Peasant Boy with Tobias and the Angel⁹⁹Minneapolis, Institute of Art; illustrated in Roethlisberger/Bok 1993, II, fig. 591. also show a figure, or figures, occupying a corner of the foreground in a landscape setting.¹⁰¹⁰Kloek 2002, p. 48. Cuyp undoubtedly knew the latter painting, as he used the figure of the peasant boy shown in a similar pose for his Shepherd and Shepherdess in a Landscape with Cows.¹¹¹¹Budapest, Szépmüvészeti Múzeum; illustrated in Dordrecht 2002, p. 103. The shepherdess’s pose in the present painting, including her pointing gesture, is also very similar to that of the peasant boy in the work by Bloemaert. While Cuyp’s bright palette and drapery style are reminiscent of Bloemaert, his figures, especially in the present painting, are more robust and clumsy.

Kloek has identified the figure in the middleground of this and the 1627 painting as the sower in Christ’s parable related in the gospels of Matthew (13:1-23), Mark (4:1-20) and Luke (8:4-15).¹²¹²Kloek in Dordrecht 2002, p. 94. The sower’s seed, which Christ use as a symbol for God’s word, falls sometimes on the path, sometimes on hard rock, sometimes among thorns and sometimes on good soil. It is most desirable for both the sower’s seed and God’s word that they fall on good soil. The fact that the shepherdess is fully clothed and accompanied by a child, a young billy-goat and a lamb makes it difficult to accept the suggestion made by Kloek that she represents Lust, and thereby is meant to be viewed as the moral opposite of the sower, who represents contemplation.¹³¹³Kloek in Dordrecht 2002, p. 94. Instead, the shepherdess, the young animals, the boy and the flowers seem to allude to nature’s fecundity, specifically the fecundity of the countryside around Dordrecht, as that town is shown in the background. Rather than forming a contrast to the shepherdess, the sower from Christ’s parable (to whom the smiling shepherdess is moreover pointing) complements her; Dordrecht’s soil is not only fertile in the physical sense, but also in a spiritual sense, and one cannot be had without the other.

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. 53.

Chong 1992, p. 544, no. JC 76; Kloek 2002, pp. 48-49; Kloek in Dordrecht 2002, pp. 96-97, no. 7; Chong 2002b, p. 171, no. 13, with earlier literature

1903, p. 79, no. 753; 1976, p. 185, no. A 1793; 2007, no. 53

J. Bikker, 2007, 'Jacob Gerritsz. Cuyp, The Shepherdess, 1628', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.7500