#pastoral

Art the community tagged “pastoral” — see what people make of it.

Erisava Staff Aug 14

Mural Sketch, Pastoral Study, No. 1 by Henry Keller, 1920

Mural Sketch, Pastoral Study, No. 1

Cleveland Museum of Art · wikidata.org

CC0

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.

Erisava Staff Aug 9

L'Accord parfait by Jean-Antoine Watteau, 1719

L'Accord parfait

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?

Erisava Staff Aug 6

Pastoral by François Boucher, 1730

Pastoral

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.

Erisava Staff Jul 28

Pastoral Repast by François Boucher, 1769

Pastoral Repast

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?