A Seated Shepherdess (c. 1836): Art, History and Details

A Seated Shepherdess (c. 1836) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Jules Dupré (French, 1811–1889).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Unique for Jules Dupré, who mostly recorded landscapes, this sheet features a woman holding a crook for herding sheep. Many middle-class collectors at the time were eager for images of rural life while cities grew and factories proliferated. Cleveland’s drawing forms a pair with a similar depiction of a male shepherd, also created using wetted and burnished white pastel on earthy brown paper. It is one of numerous objects in these galleries formerly owned by Clevelander Muriel Butkin, a passionate scholar and collector of French art from the 1800s who bequeathed nearly 300 drawings to the museum.

Object facts

• Title: A Seated Shepherdess
• Date: c. 1836
• Creator attribution: Jules Dupré (French, 1811–1889)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: black chalk with white heightening and white pastel on brown paper laid down on board
• Dimensions: Sheet: 61.1 x 47.6 cm (24 1/16 x 18 3/4 in.)
• Collection: DR - French
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 2009.314

A detail from the museum

Dupré was known for his evocative skies reflecting different atmospheric conditions.

Collection credit

Bequest of Muriel Butkin

Further reading listed by the museum

• Catalogue des tableaux et dessins provenant de l’atelier Jules Dupré. Paris: Hotel Drouot, 1890.
• Catalogue des tableaux modernes [. . .] appartenant à divers. Paris: Hôtel Drouot, 1929.
• Lang, L.-Maurice. La Cote des tableaux, ou Annuaire des ventes [. . .] guide du marchand, de l’amateur, 11:91. Paris: L.-Maurice Lang, 1929.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.