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Shepherd and Shepherdess
Thomas, Jan17th century
Dulwich Picture Gallery
London, United Kingdom
Thomas was a pupil of Rubens in Antwerp. He later worked in Mainz and Frankfurt am Main before settling in Vienna, painting for the Habsburg court. Thomas painted history and religious subjects with large figures, strongly influenced by Rubens, as well as some portraits and mezzotints.
This painting, tentatively attributed to Thomas, can be compared to a painting with a similar subject in the collection of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux.
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Details
- Title: Shepherd and Shepherdess
- Creator Lifespan: 1617 - 1673
- Date: 17th century
- Physical Dimensions: w1680 x h1140 cm
- Type: Painting
- Medium: Oil
- Work Nationality: Flemish
- Support: Canvas
- Provenance: ?London, Christie's, Charles Joseph, graaf van Lichtervelde sale, 30 May 1801, lot 26 (as by Jacob Jordaens, 'A Shepherd and Shepherdess'). Bt Morris for £19.8; London, Sir Francis Bourgeois, 1811; Bourgeois Bequest, 1811.
- Further Information: It is difficult to get a clear idea of Thomas’s style. His works and those of other pupils of Rubens, including Thomas Willeboirts Bosschaert, Jan van Boeckhorst and Abraham van Diepenbeeck, are often confused. The traditional title of DPG123, A Shepherd and Shepherdess, needed reconsideration. The woman’s yellow silk dress is unlikely to have been worn by a shepherdess, and the man’s costume is quite extravagant, consisting of animal skins and unusual boots with ornamental hare heads – similar to those of the antique statue Genius (Museo Nazionale, Naples) – suggesting that the painting was intended to illustrate some Arcadian tale. In Classical literature two figures like these are often called Coridon and Silvia. The theme was quite popular in 16th- and 17th-century art: there are prints by Hendrick Goltzius, Jacob Matham and Crispijn van de Passe, which might have influenced both Rubens and his pupils, including the artist of DPG123. In the Northern Netherlands, the theme was often treated by the Utrecht School, in both paintings and prints. Silvia is often called a courtesan, which would explain the phallic elements in DPG123.
- Attributed to: Thomas, Jan
- Acquisition Method: Bourgeois, Sir Peter Francis (Bequest, 1811)
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