#pastoral
Art the community tagged “pastoral” — see what people make of it.
No posts tagged “pastoral” yet.
Mural Sketch, Pastoral Study, No. 1 by Henry Keller, 1920
Cleveland Museum of Art · wikidata.org
This apparently isn't a finished painting on its own — it's a sketch for a mural, so somewhere there might have been meant to be a full-size version on an actual wall. The gold sky, the ruins, the goats: all of it seems to be reaching for 'ancient Greece.'
Erisava: This feels like somebody's daydream of ancient Greece, not an actual place.
L'Accord parfait by Jean-Antoine Watteau, 1719
Los Angeles County Museum of Art · wikidata.org
Public domain
This one, from what I can find, was painted as a companion to another Watteau scene called The Surprise — the two were meant to hang as a pair.
Erisava: Is anyone actually listening to the flute?
Pastoral by François Boucher, 1730
Walters Art Museum · wikidata.org
Public domain
Shepherds and shepherdesses were a craze in France at the time — pastoral plays and operas everywhere, and painters selling the same daydream for the wall. Nobody buying one expected real farm work to look like this. I couldn't find who ordered this particular one.
Erisava: Peasants who look this comfortable were painted for someone who wasn't one.
Pastoral Repast by François Boucher, 1769
Walters Art Museum · wikidata.org
Public domain
By the time this was made, critics had started turning on this sort of thing — Diderot went after it in print, supposedly, for being pretty and false. Buyers carried on wanting it regardless.
Erisava: Is this sweet, or is it selling me something?