Landscape with Shepherd Boy

A golden light infuses this imagined landscape, spotlighting a young shepherd boy, head bowed and deep in concentration as he tenderly clips his puppy’s paws. With his tall hat abandoned casually at his side and his outstretched leg, there is a sense of youthful spontaneity in his pose. Nestled beneath a Roman ruin, the foreground group is connected by the diagonal thrust of the composition which moves through the slope of the fallen cornice, the slant of the boy’s shoulders and along his extended leg, ending with his clog that directs attention to the group of sheep. The flock are expertly observed by the artist, from their lilac-tinted curls of fleece to their placid expressions, with one animated sheep open-mouthed, mid-bleat. The painting has a loose, unfinished quality, with traces of the artist’s underdrawing visible in the fallen masonry and in the abandoned black line which echoes the shape of the dog’s back. A few human figures, known as staffage, add a narrative element to the simplified landscape in which riders and walkers congregate in and around the river. The composition may be an allegory of industry, with the shepherd dutifully tending both to his sheep and his working dogs in the foreground while the background figures are charged with a sense of purpose or a destination in mind.  

Jan Weenix (1642-1719) was a Dutch artist, working in Utrecht in the mid-1660s. This early work is from a period when he was following in the footsteps of his father, Jan Baptist Weenix (1621–60/61), producing genre paintings in an Italianate style. Both the ruined Roman temple and the sheep were probably copied from his father’s drawings. The slightly disjointed combination of subject matter in this painting – the landscape with Roman ruins, the detailed figure of the boy, the animals and husbandry – showcases the breadth of Weenix’s skills. He later moved to Amsterdam and changed his style, becoming a master at trophy paintings – elaborate still lifes that depicted the spoils of the hunt, often in imaginary landscape settings and occasionally featuring the faithful hunting spaniels that are so expertly rendered here.