Cleveland Museum of Art

A Seated Shepherdess

Jules Dupré

Date

c. 1836

Medium

black chalk with white heightening and white pastel on brown paper laid down on board

Culture

France, 19th century

Department

Drawings

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

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

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