Karel Dujardin, Sheep and Goats

This painting – small, but charming and detailed – was made late in Karel Dujardin’s life, when he was living in Amsterdam. It seems to show nostalgia for the hills in the Campagna, the countryside around Rome.

Dujardin’s animals are alive and realistic. They’re softly lit, the sheep almost glowing in the evening sun; their solid, rounded forms are echoed in the puffy white clouds overhead. The flesh under the wool appears plump and heavy, and the skilled painting of the wool itself makes its curly texture almost tactile.

The standing goat is watchful, its tail probably flicking to keep off flies, its ears alert. The other goats almost disappear into the background of shade and dark foliage; one, horns resplendent and mouth wide open, is perhaps bleating, perhaps chewing. In the distance, a flock of sheep is scattered over the hillside. This tranquil rural scene is typical of most of Dujardin’s work, and contrasts strongly with The Conversion of Saint Paul, one of his turbulent, narrative paintings.

The light is soft, but not as mellow as the skies of Berchem and other Italianate painters. Dujardin’s skies retain a sharpness of tone – a clear, cool blue more associated with the northern skies of the Netherlands. The romanticised view of the landscape offered by the Italianate artists contrasted with the more down-to-earth views of Jan van Goyen (look at A Windmill by a River), and Dujardin seems to bridge the gap between them.

Paintings of landscape and animals were extremely popular in the seventeenth-century Netherlands. For city dwellers, they were a reminder of a quieter, more stable way of life they perhaps saw as idyllic, and a reminder that part of the prosperity of their nation came from the countryside.

Dujardin had originally made the picture as an etching some 18 years before he painted it. In the seventeenth century etchings were frequently made from a picture for a less prosperous clientele than could afford the original, so his reversing the process in this way was unusual.