A Shepherd piping on a knoll with a dog and his flock nearby; and A Shepherdess reclining on a knoll with a lamb, a hound, and a ram

Peter Wtewael was the eldest son of the Utrecht Mannerist painter, Joachim Wtewael, and the only one of Joachim’s children to follow in his footsteps as an artist. Peter was only briefly active as an artist between 1624 and 1630, producing an oeuvre of just a handful of signed paintings and about twenty-five other securely attributable works. A possible explanation for this relatively small body of work can be found in an observation made by Joachim von Sandrart in 1626, which is recorded in his Teutsche Academie, published in 1675-9: 'One of his [Joachim's] sons practiced this profession also, and came along far in it, and would have achieved great learning in this art, if he had remained active in it. For they have fallen love with the flax business and have made a fine fortune in it' (see A.W. Lowenthal, 1986, op. cit., p. 30).

Many unsigned works, including the present pair, were long thought to have been executed by Joachim. Father and son painted in a similar manner, utilizing highly polished figures in affected postures, similar plump and expressive facial types, along with the naturalistic treatment of textures. These paintings were recognized as being by Peter Wtewael by Anne Lowenthal, who first acknowledged the pair in 1974 (loc. cit.). She speculates that the highly individualized faces of the shepherd and shepherdess here were most likely based on Peter's own brother and sister, who would have been convenient models, and compares them to the portraits in the Centraal Museum, Utrecht (figs. 1 and 2). The 'Shepherd' and 'Shepherdess' as arcadian subjects in painting were inspired by characters in the popular pastoral play Granida by Pieter Cornelisz. Hooft, published in 1615. If these two paintings are indeed real portraits, they would be among the earliest examples of portrait historié with an arcadian theme.