From being staffage in landscapes, shepherds and their flocks became motifs in their own right, with the social realist of Millet, even Henri Regnault.
Millet
Used by Joseph Wright of Derby to symbolise knowledge coming from darkness, by Henry Fuseli for the mysterious even supernatural, and Millet and van Gogh for poverty.
From their genre roots in the Dutch Golden Age, through Géricault and Courbet, to the social realism of Millet, Manet, and most of all Lhermitte.
Landscapes generally without stories attached. Among them two scenes of early caravanning, a sower, and back to the railway.
In these years, he painted peaceful rural scenes, without the social narratives which had featured in his earlier work.
In the nineteenth century, with the decline of patronage and changed art markets, fables become more popular among painter, at least before they gained patrons.
He first painted rural workers, in a distinctive earth palette. Then came the war, which changed everything.
A major painter in Austria in the early 20th century, his early paintings appear Naturalist. Then in 1900 he saw the work of Hodler, and his work changed dramatically.
A detailed look at his paintings of the rural poor which led up to Naturalism, and how he used a compositional formula so successfully.
Little-known now, and only for his paintings of harvesters and gleaners, in his day he was at the leading edge of the Naturalist revolution, painting scientists.
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