The Shepherd

Designer After Samuel Palmer British

1828

Not on view

Sherman belonged to "The Ancients," an artistic brotherhood based at Shoreham, Kent in the late 1820s and early 1830s. His engraving of a youthful shepherd dreaming by the sea is based on a drawing by Samuel Palmer, who wrote in 1828, “If Mr. Sherman have finish’d his print he need not wait ‘til I see it, but may bring it out directly...as the more copies are sold the sooner the plate will be his own.” The work was never published, however, and only five copies are known. The mysterious image conveys Palmer’s admiration for Albrecht Dürer’s "Melancholia", as well as his closeness to George Richmond, a friend and fellow Ancient, whose own "Shepherd" engraving of 1827 describes a figure with a muscular twisted arm gripping a crook.

Artwork Details

Overview

Provenance

References

Title: The Shepherd
Artist: Welby Sherman (British, active 1827–36)
Designer: After Samuel Palmer (British, London 1805–1881 Redhill, Surrey)
Artist: Albrecht Dürer (German, Nuremberg 1471–1528 Nuremberg)
Date: 1828
Medium: Engraving on chine collé
Dimensions: Plate: 4 1/4 × 3 1/8 in. (10.8 × 7.9 cm)
Sheet: 9 11/16 × 7 3/8 in. (24.6 × 18.8 cm)
Classification: Prints
Credit Line: The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 2013
Object Number: 2013.34
Curatorial Department: Drawings and Prints

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