The Shepherds

In a forest glade a young man in a plumed beret dances with a woman in satin, while others whisper, watch or play on a swing. Far back in the bushes, a real shepherd minds real sheep. Watteau's The Shepherds is a pastoral poem turned into paint.

The story behind the painting

Les Bergers was painted by Antoine Watteau around 1717 and is now in Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin. It is the most finished version of a composition that also exists as Pastoral Pleasure in the Musee Conde at Chantilly. The sources tell this relationship in two ways: the article on this painting says the composition was later reused in Pastoral Pleasure, while the article on the Chantilly picture dates it about 1714 to 1716 and reports Pierre Rosenberg's view that it was an oil sketch for this one.

What to look for

The canvas measures about 56 by 81 cm. In the centre a young man in an elegant doublet and plumed beret dances what seems to be a minuet with a young woman in a satin dress, while a musician plays. One couple watches the dancers, another whispers, and a third plays with a swing. Several details come from Peter Paul Rubens: the musician, his neighbour, the shepherd embracing the woman beside him, and the dog in front. Then search the far right background, where a real shepherd's sheep graze, almost hidden by bushes.

Meaning and intent

The scene shows city dwellers in the countryside pretending to be peasants, and the real shepherd makes their play acting even clearer. It may recall Poussin's Arcadian shepherds, but Poussin painted a mythical Arcadia with idealised classical figures and no real shepherds at all. Watteau's shepherds are what the writer Fontenelle called half true: a pastoral that leaves out the hardship of real work to please the imagination. The painting turns the French pastoral poetry of its time into an image.

Legacy

The figures' harmony with nature was a convention of an aristocratic society that imitated an ideal pastoral life in places like the gardens of Versailles, and the style is close to the shepherd lovers described by the abbe Du Bos. As the most finished of the surviving versions of this composition, the Berlin painting shows Watteau's idea at its fullest: music, dancing and courtship in a green glade, with the true countryside watching quietly from the edge.