Shepherd and Sheep on a Sunny Hillside
Returned to lender
This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.In this luminous landscape, Fragonard interprets nature through the lens of seventeenth-century Dutch artists, such as Jacob van Ruisdael, whose pictures he copied. From such sources he freely appropriated various compositional features, including the diagonal slope of the terrain, the dramatic silhouettes of the trees, and the miniscule scale of the shepherd and his flock. Fragonard’s painterly technique, however, distinguishes the work from its Dutch precedents. The surface of the drawing seems to vibrate with daubs of brown wash that mimic dappled sunlight.
Artwork Details
- Title: Shepherd and Sheep on a Sunny Hillside
- Artist: Jean Honoré Fragonard (French, Grasse 1732–1806 Paris)
- Date: ca. 1768-72
- Medium: Brush and brown wash over graphite
- Dimensions: 13 5/8 × 18 3/8 in. (34.6 × 46.7 cm)
- Classification: Drawings
- Credit Line: The Morgan Library & Museum, New York (III, 114)
- Curatorial Department: Drawings and Prints