Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. Letter to Eugène Benon. July 31, 1891 [excerpt published in "Collection de Monsieur X... lettres autographes de peintres des XIXe et XXe siècles," Hôtel Drouot, Paris, June 25, 1975, no. 138], asks his friend to look at this painting which is hanging in Durand-Ruel's gallery and is about to be shipped to America.
Arsène Alexandre. Puvis de Chavannes. London, [1905], ill. p. 37, as "The Song of the Shepherd".
Evening Post (April 25, 1906) [published in Ref. Sutton 1972, vol. 1, p. 26], calls it "rarely beautiful".
Roger Fry. Letter to Helen Fry. March 16, 1906 [published in Ref. Sutton 1972, vol. 1, letter no. 181, p. 258], refers to the MMA acquisition of this picture.
"Gallery Number XXIV." Scrip 1 (June 1906), p. 291, ill. opp. p. 292, calls it a "beautiful and unmanageable" picture "which nevertheless serves a purpose in marking the gulf between Puvis de Chavannes and what might be called the modern past".
Kenyon Cox. The Classic Point of View: Six Lectures on Painting. New York, 1911, p. 149, pl. 30, as "The Song of the Shepherd"; criticizes the execution of the figures in this picture.
Carl Georg Heise. "Amerikanische Museen." Kunst und Künstler 23 (September 1925), ill. p. 339.
Camille Mauclair. Puvis de Chavannes. Paris, 1928, p. 162, calls it a sketch for "Antique Vision" (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyons).
Charles Sterling and Margaretta M. Salinger. "XIX Century." French Paintings: A Catalogue of the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 2, New York, 1966, p. 231, ill., mention a nude study for the seated woman (MMA 35.93.2).
Albert Boime. The Academy and French Painting in the Nineteenth Century. London, 1971, p. 75, fig. 40, comments on the influence of Thomas Couture in this picture.
Mary Anne Stevens and Alan Bowness in French Symbolist Painters: Moreau, Puvis de Chavannes, Redon and their Followers. Exh. cat., Hayward Gallery. London, 1972, pp. 111–12, no. 226, ill.
Letters of Roger Fry. New York, 1972, vol. 1, pp. 26, 255 n. 1 to letter no. 177 (March 2, 1906), p. 258 n. 4 to letter no. 181 (March 16, 1906).
Richard J. Wattenmaker. Puvis de Chavannes and the Modern Tradition. Exh. cat., Art Gallery of Ontario. Toronto, 1975, pp. xxiii, 27–28, 77, 82–83, no. 32, ill., compares it to the "Antique Vision" in the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, calling both paintings modern reinterpretations of Giovanni Bellini's "Allegory" (about 1488; Uffizi Gallery, Florence).
Louise d'Argencourt in Puvis de Chavannes, 1824–1898. Exh. cat., Grand Palais, Paris. Ottawa, 1977, pp. 193, 215, no. 195, ill. p. 217 [French ed., Paris, 1976, pp. 196, 217, no. 195, ill. p. 219], mentions a related painted reduction in a private collection.
Frances Spalding. Roger Fry: Art and Life. Berkeley, 1980, p. 91.
John Pope-Hennessy. "Roger Fry and The Metropolitan Museum of Art." Oxford, China, and Italy: Writings in Honour of Sir Harold Acton on his Eightieth Birthday. London, 1984, p. 235.
Gary Tinterow et al. "Modern Europe." The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 8, New York, 1987, p. 79, ill. (color).
Denys Sutton in Treasures from The Metropolitan Museum of Art: French Art from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century. Exh. cat., Yokohama Museum of Art. [Tokyo?], 1989, p. 23.
Gary Tinterow in Treasures from The Metropolitan Museum of Art: French Art from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century. Exh. cat., Yokohama Museum of Art. [Tokyo?], 1989, pp. 139–40, no. 85, ill. (color).
Gary Tinterow. "Letters: The New Rooms at the Metropolitan Museum, New York." Burlington Magazine 136 (April 1994), p. 241.
Dominique Brachlianoff in Puvis de Chavannes au Musée des Beaux-arts de Lyon. Exh. cat., Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyons. [Paris], 1998, p. 132, ill., reproduces the drawing of the three figures from the Lyons "Antique Vision" used as a study for this composition.
Pierre Vaisse in Puvis de Chavannes au Musée des Beaux-arts de Lyon. Exh. cat., Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyons. [Paris], 1998, p. 47, fig. 26.
T. J. Clark. Farewell to an Idea: Episodes from a History of Modernism. New Haven, 1999, p. 90, fig. 47 (color), observes this picture's influence on Pissarro's "Two Young Peasant Women" (1892; MMA 1973.311.5).
Peter Nørgaard Larsen in Symbolism in Danish and European Painting 1870–1910. Exh. cat., Statens Museum for Kunst. [Copenhagen], 2000, pp. 24–25, 282, no. 4, ill. (color).
Margaret Werth. The Joy of Life: The Idyllic in French Art, circa 1900. Berkeley, 2002, p. 1, fig. 1.
Kathryn Calley Galitz in Masterpieces of European Painting, 1800–1920, in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2007, pp. 76, 294, no. 70, ill. (color and black and white).
Kathryn Calley Galitz in The Masterpieces of French Painting from The Metropolitan Museum of Art: 1800–1920. Exh. cat., Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. New York, 2007, pp. 67, 249, no. 44, ill. (color and black and white).
Gary Tinterow in The Masterpieces of French Painting from The Metropolitan Museum of Art: 1800–1920. Exh. cat., Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. New York, 2007, p. 7.
Aimée Brown Price. "The Artist and His Art." Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. 1, New Haven, 2010, pp. 111, 152, 165, colorpl. 190.
Aimée Brown Price. "A Catalogue Raisonné of the Painted Work." Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. 2, New Haven, 2010, pp. 218, 278, 284, 286, 331–33, 349, no. 350, ill. (color), discusses the psychological and physical isolation of the figures; catalogues two oil paintings which may be preparatory sketches for this picture, one of the figures (about 1885–91; Collection Daniel Malingue; Price no. 307) and the other of the landscape setting (about 1890–91; Mercier and Duchemin Gallery, Paris; Price no. 349).
