The Shepherdess

The Shepherdess was created in the period between Šumanović's two sojourns in Paris, as a blend of earlier post-Cubist ideas and experiences adopted during his first stay in Paris and a new, prevailing, neoclassical spirit. On the one hand, the monumental female figure in the foreground - in the exalted landscape ambience, as if carved out from geometrised forms, rationally desaturated in colour, in a balance of plastic and decorative values of the painting - is performed in the tradition of synthetic stylisation of Cezanne and post-Cubism of Lhote and Picasso. On the other hand, in the compositional construction of the painting elements, the artist's bond with the tradition of Renaissance masters is expressed, especially with Pousen's classicist architectonics. The heroised voluminous female figure in a semi-recumbent position remains in balance with all horizontals, verticals and diagonals, and everything stays in the rational rhythm of the dynamic and static. The painting is one of his most significant achievements in composing modelled masses based on classical rules and values. In the same year, 1924, he published his writing Why I love Pousen's painting.