The work is part of the large group of landscapes painted by Grigorescu around 1902 – 1903, in the free style, with “gestural” strokes of his last period of creation, called “the white period”. The composition is organised horizontally, having a diagonal marked by the hill coast, which divides the surface of the painting into two triangles: the one on the left – the hill with the earth and the sheep; the one on the right – the atmosphere with the sky and the landscape suggestion viewed from above, getting lost in the distance. The character is seen from the side, seated at the parting between the two worlds, looking in the distance. The dreamy note is intertwined with the dynamic suggestion given by the swift succession of wide, regular strokes. Dating from the same period, the painting Shepherd in the Field from the Art Museum of Iași (oil on wood, 28.5 x 49 cm, inv. 308)1, apparently illustrates the same pattern in identical clothing, seen from the front, in a flat landscape. The comparison of the two images confirms the idea of the variations on the same theme as the artist’s method for working and studying.
The drawing Shepherd, Inv. 26870/2283, preserved in the MNAR Cabinet of prints and drawings heritage, representing a character dressed alike and with a hat of the same shape, seen from the side, may have been the graphics exercise preceding the commented painting.
If this work was part of the Grigorescu Exhibition organized within the Great Jubilee Exhibition of 1906, then it may have been catalogued under number 78 (Nicolae N. Seceleanu Collection) with the name Shepherd with Herd at the Foot of the Mountain2.
However, the 1906 catalogue only offers the title and the collection of origin.
Orig.: Nicolae N. Seceleanu Collection (?)
1 Reproduced and catalogued in Oprescu 1970, ill. and cat. 158, p. 114.
2 Identification made in the catalog of the Christmas auction, Artmark 2012 (I.P.)
