7 best shepherd paintings

Over a thousand years of pastoral scenes

1. Edgar Barclay, The Shepherd; Edgar Barclay Collection, Wiltshire Council. Art UK

A skyscape rather than a landscape, this painting is all about the shepherd’s connection with nature and the elements – the exhilaration of a fine day on Salisbury Plain. Born in London, Edgar Barclay (1842–1913) studied art in Germany and Italy. Returning to England in the 1880s, he became preoccupied with painting rural Wessex, particularly Stonehenge. Several of his pictures include shepherds and sheep. In 1910, WH Hudson wrote his classic book The Shepherd’s Life, based in the same area of the Wiltshire Downs.

2. Anton Mauve, The Return to the Fold, 1873; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

It is rare for a pastoral scene to depict the bare earth and mud. Here, sheep are returning to the fold in winter. A leading artist of The Hague School, Anton Mauve (1838–88) was a cousin of Van Gogh by marriage and benefited from the international contacts of Van Gogh’s art dealer Uncle Cent. Mauve’s shepherd scenes proved such a popular subject with American buyers that it is said that he was able to vary his prices, according to whether the sheep were coming towards you or going away. As the latter, this is the more economical treatment.

3. Jean-François Millet, Bergère avec son troupeau, c 1863; Musee d’Orsay, Paris.

This luminous portrayal of a little shepherdess brought Jean-François Millet (1814–75) critical acclaim when he exhibited it at the 1864 Paris Salon. With its golden light, there is a harmonious serenity about the scene – the sheep have their heads down grazing and the shepherdess is intent on her knitting. Greatly idealised, featuring a young shepherd girl, it had more popular appeal than Millet’s earlier pictures of peasants working in the fields. It was a subject that took hold of Millet, he developed numerous versions of it. He produced four pastels after this painting alone, including ones now in the Getty Museum and The Walters Art Museum. The artist’s daughter, Louise, was the model for the little shepherdess. The landscape evokes the plain of Chailly at Fontainebleau, near Millet’s home at Barbizon.

4. Edwin Henry Landseer, A Highland Shepherd's Home, c 1836; Government Art Collection, Art UK.

Novelty alone justifies this painting’s inclusion in the list. An interior shepherd scene! It was painted by Edwin Henry Landseer (1802–73) for the art collector and patron John Sheepshanks, who referred to it as his ‘highland holy family’. The strangeness of this Nativity, in which Mary and Joseph merge roles with the shepherds, is heightened by its setting in a Victorian crofter’s cottage.

5. Aelbert Cuyp, Herd of Sheep at Pasture, c 1645 – 55; Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main.

The charm of this painting is the way it combines the sophisticated atmospheric effects of Italian art – golden Venetian light – with the imagery of a Dutch rustic scene. The shepherd, leaning on his staff, and the sheep dog have a lifelike ease. Like many artists at the time, though, Aelbert Cuyp (1620–91) struggled with the sheep, which are more like lamas in size and appearance.

6. Giorgione, The Adoration of the Shepherds, 1505–10; National Gallery of Art, Washington DC.

One of the most celebrated Renaissance treatments of the Adoration of the Shepherds, it includes no sheep. The shepherds have responded in such haste to the holy message that they have left their sheep behind. However, Giorgione (c 1473–1510) retains the sense of the pastoral through his inclusion of the luminous landscape and sky to the left of the painting. Kneeling before the baby Jesus, the shepherds’ humility is conveyed through their torn and tatty clothing.

7. Fresco of The Good Shepherd in the Catacombs of Priscilla, Rome, c 225 AD.

Painted on the vaulted ceiling of a burial chamber – the Cubiculum of the Veiled Woman – in the catacombs of Rome, this early Christian fresco represents the Good Shepherd of St John’s Gospel, in which Jesus lays down his life for his sheep. The shepherd stands in a garden of paradise with a peacock and dove in the trees to either side of him. To the shepherd’s right is a sheep and to his left a goat. They represent the final judgement in which the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. Despite its distinctive Christian iconography, the fresco also continues a Roman burial tradition in which shepherds signified the peace and tranquillity of the afterlife.