Two young shepherds crossing a stream (i); A family fording a river with their animals (ii)

Bridges and water often feature in Pillement's landscapes. The pastel Le Passage du Pont, a work from 1794 in a private collection, shows a shepherd and his flock crossing a similar bridge to the first of the pair offered here (M. Gordon-Smith, Pillement, Cracow 2006, no. 272, ill.). Like the latter work, the two pastels were probably made on the artist’s return from the Iberian peninsula, when he settled in Pézénas in the Languedoc between 1789 and 1800.