David Teniers the Younger

Private Collection, Belgium;

Where acquired privately, in 1971;

Private Collection, Belgium, until the sale;

Anonymous sale, Replica Shoes 's, London, 6 July 2006, lot 175;

Where acquired by the present owner.

This huge composition stands out in the corpus of works by David Teniers the Younger not only for its large size but for its subject, which departs from his more common scenes of daily life and Dutch interiors.

Here, the artist gives prominence to the landscape, centred on a habitation with a figure. In the foreground, a shepherd watches his flock. The work probably dates to the 1660s, after he had acquired a house in Perk. Teniers then began to paint bucolic scenes, describing an idyllic vision of a peaceful life in the heart of nature.

The figure of the shepherd comes from the engraving of the Shepherd, made by Ingram after a work by Teniers the Younger le Jeune and published in 1741; the artist returns to it in this canvas in almost identical fashion: sitting on a rock, the shepherd, wearing a hat, blows on his horn, surrounded by cattle, goats and sheep, with a building on a mountain looming above.

The engraving of the Happy Shepherd is accompanied by a pendant, The Shepherd dreaming, in which he is seen slumped on the ground, still surrounded by his flock below a rock overlooked by a habitation. The monumental vertical format of this canvas suggests that it too could have had a pendant in the same format, perhaps reworking the figure of the dreaming shepherd, possibly to decorate the interior of a prosperous home.