Watermark: none.
Claude's landscapes increasingly reflected his engagement with ancient pastoral poetry, such as Virgil's Ecologues, then in vogue among Roman intellectuals, aristocrats, and high clergy. Resting in the shade, a shepherd sits in contemplation while his herd grazes. The trees are unruffled by the wind, and the sky is immaculate, rendering the countryside as a poetically ideal place where men live in harmony with nature. Large, finished, and bearing a signature and date, this sheet was likely intended by Claude as an autonomous work of art. -- Exhibition Label, From "Poussin, Claude, and French Drawing in the Classical Age"
Inscribed and dated on verso, in pen and brown ink, at bottom center, "Claudio Gellě/fecit et inventor/Roma 1645"; numbered in pen and brown ink, in opposite direction at upper right margin, "13"; also in black chalk, "2222".
Wellesley, Henry, 1791-1866, former owner.
Murray, Charles Fairfax, 1849-1919, former owner.
Morgan, J. Pierpont (John Pierpont), 1837-1913, former owner.
Collection J. Pierpont Morgan : Drawings by the Old Masters Formed by C. Fairfax Murray. London : Privately printed, 1905-1912, III, 82, repr.
Roethlisberger, Marcel. Claude Lorrain. The Drawings, 1968, no. 592.
Denison, Cara D., and Helen B. Mules, with the assistance of Jane V. Shoaf. European Drawings, 1375-1825. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1981, no. 52, repr.
Denison, Cara D. French Drawings, 1550-1825. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1984, no. 19, repr.
Denison, Cara D. French Master Drawings in the Pierpont Morgan Library. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1993, no. 21, repr.
In August Company : The Collections of the Pierpont Morgan Library. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1993, p. 291-92, no. 18, repr in color.
The Morgan Library : An American Masterpiece. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 2000, p. 60, repr. in color.