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Lot Essay
This bucolic scene of a shepherd with his flock of goats and sheep resting beside a stream, is both charming and rare. The shepherd stands on the bank, against the backdrop of an Italianate mountainous landscape, and hands a jug of water to his companion, who is nursing a child at her breast. The pair calls to mind the couple fishing in the foreground of The Three Trees (see lot 17, Old Masters Part I), but as a subject is also reminiscent of The Rest on the Flight into Egypt (see lot 28). In style, manner and size, the present print is however closely related to The sleeping Herdsman (NH 217), made around the same time, although it is entirely without the latter’s erotic charge. The Shepherd and his Family is executed predominantly in etching, with the figures, animals, foliage and brook in the foreground more heavily bitten than the more lightly etched lines in the background scenery. This creates both the sense of the landscape receding, and the effects of light and shade which suggest the time of day as late afternoon or early morning, with long shadows and bright sunshine on the hills in the distance with a citadel upon it's crest. It is charming example of an Arcadian ideal, ‘a forerunner of the bucolic landscapes by Aelbert Cuyp (1620-91), Paulus Potter (1625-54) and Nicolaes Berchem (1621/22-83), in which it is life with and among the animals rather than the amorous relationships between shepherds and shepherdesses that is emphasized’ (Hinterding, 2008, p. 406).
The two circles visible in the centre and upper subject, and the presence of other, seemingly random lines suggest that Rembrandt may have re-used an old copper plate. These imperfectly erased remains of a previous design, although entirely abstract and unrelated to the subject of this print, somehow add atmosphere and texture to the image. Rembrandt must have approved of the unusual appearance of this plate - although it is rare, he printed it in considerable numbers, and not just in a few trial proofs.
The two circles visible in the centre and upper subject, and the presence of other, seemingly random lines suggest that Rembrandt may have re-used an old copper plate. These imperfectly erased remains of a previous design, although entirely abstract and unrelated to the subject of this print, somehow add atmosphere and texture to the image. Rembrandt must have approved of the unusual appearance of this plate - although it is rare, he printed it in considerable numbers, and not just in a few trial proofs.