The herd, crossing the brook

Nicolaes Pieterszoon Berchem (1620-83) was a highly esteemed and prolific Dutch Golden Age painter of pastoral landscapes, populated with mythological or biblical figures, but also of a number of allegories and genre pieces.

He was a member of the second generation of "Dutch Italianate landscape" painters. These were artists who travelled to Italy (though Berchem evidently did not) or aspired to do so, in order to soak up the romanticism of the country, bringing home sketchbooks full of drawings of classical ruins and pastoral imagery. His paintings, of which he produced an immense number, (Hofstede de Groot claimed around 850, although many are misattributed), were in great demand, as were his 80 etchings - of which this is an example - and 500 drawings. His landscapes, painted in the Italian style of idealised rural scenes, with hills, mountains, cliffs and trees in a golden dawn are sought after. Berchem also painted inspired and attractive human and animal figures (staffage) in works of other artists, like Allaert van Everdingen, Jan Hackaert, Gerrit Dou, Meindert Hobbema and Willem Schellinks. As well as being a printmaker, Berchem was an avid print collector who would evidently borrow money from puipls and friends and pay them back from the proceeds of paintings that he didn't tell this wife about!

Berchem sets this lively scene in romantic countryside, far closer to Italy in its sheer cliffs than to the Netherlands, and the subject is one that he addressed elsewhere, e.g. his painting <em>The cattle herd</em> (1656; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam). The contrast is notable between the drover on horseback and wearing a tall hat, and presumably his wife and companion in the right foreground. Although the theme is a secular and could be described as rural 'genre etching', there are definite echoes of older religious themes in Noah's Ark, while the juxtaposition of the elegant mother and child, her back turned to us, together with the sleek-looking sheep,  deliberately evokes the Madonna and Child/ Holy Lamb of St John the Baptist. This impression is from the third or later of six documented states.

See: Wikipedia, 'Nicolaes Pieterszoon Berchem',  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaes_Pieterszoon_Berchem

Dr Mark Stocker   Curator, Historical International Art   September 2018