A goatherd playing a pipe on the banks of a river by an estuary. Aquatint by M. Dubourg, 1809, after W.M. Craig after Claude Lorraine.

  • Lorrain, Claude, 1600-1682.
Date:
Jan.y 12 1809
Reference:
3055142i
  • Pictures

About this work

Description

One of four compositions by Claude which could be interpreted as Apollo guarding the flocks of Admetus while Hermes (Mercury) steals his cattle: Cecchi, op. cit., nos. 196, 241, 242, and 245. Hermes would here be the drover who drives cattle along a path and out of the picture on the right. If Claude had been following the myth exactly, he should have shown the cattle walking backwards, but in the paintings reproduced by Cecchi they are walking forwards

Publication/Creation

London (Bond Street, the corner of Brook Street) : Published ... by Edw.d Orme printseller to the King, engraver and publisher, Jan.y 12 1809.

Physical description

1 print : aquatint ; platemark 41.8 x 47.5 cm

Lettering

Painted by Claude le Lorraine ; Drawn by W.M. Craig ; Engraved by M. Dubourg.

References note

D. Cecchi, L'opera completa di Claude Lorrain, Milan: Rizzoli, 1975, pp. 119-120, no. 245

Reference

Wellcome Collection 3055142i

Reproduction note

After a painting in the possession of the Ruffo family, Messina, up to the death on 11 March 1808 of Don Giovanni Ruffo (1751-1808), 7th Principe della Scaletta, Messina; acquired by Charles Kinnaird (1780-1826), 8th Lord Kinnaird of Inchture, Perth and Kinross. According to the Oxford dictionary of national biography, "Kinnaird travelled much on the continent and was an avaricious buyer of works of art dispersed during the Napoleonic wars; ... He was said to have given extravagant sums for what he regarded as his best pictures (which included works by Titian, Poussin, Teniers, and Rubens), with the result that in 1813 he was forced to sell his London possessions ... Some of the remnant of the collection he sold to the National Gallery and the rest were brought together at Rossie Priory. Kinnaird died on 12 December 1826 in Regency Square, Brighton". The painting acquired from Ruffo was sold at Kinnaird's sale of sixteen old master paintings at Phillips, London, 21 May 1811, lot 11, as 'An elegant Italian landscape': the present aquatint by Dubourg was therefore produced soon after the painting had been acquired by Kinnaird. The painting subsequently passed to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri, where called successively 'Landscape with a piping goatherd' and 'Landscape with a piping shepherd' (website of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, accessed on 20 August 2018)

Languages

Where to find it

  • LocationStatusAccess
    Closed stores
    3055142i.1
  • impression en chine
    LocationStatusAccess
    Closed stores
    3055142i.2

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