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Collections: American Art: Shepherdess Tending Sheep

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Shepherdess Tending Sheep

This work from the Houghton Farm series demonstrates Winslow Homer’s remarkable ability to use watercolor as both a descriptive and an expressive medium. The dark sky, rendered with carefully modulated gray washes, casts a moody, ominous tone over the idyllic pastoral subject of a shepherdess tending her flock.

Artist: Winslow Homer, American, 1836-1910
Medium: Watercolor over graphite with touches of opaque watercolor on cream, thick, rough textured paper
Dates: 1878
Dimensions: 11 9/16 x 19 3/4 in. (29.4 x 50.2cm) Frame: 18 x 24 x 1 1/2 in. (45.7 x 61 x 3.8 cm)
Signature: Signed lower left: "Winslow Homer 1878"
Inscriptions: On verso, two inscriptions in graphite: "H. C. Valentine / 58 W 20th" and "light buff"
Collections: American Art
Museum Location: This item is not on view
Accession Number: 41.1088
Credit Line: Dick S. Ramsay Fund
Image: Overall, 41.1088_SL1.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph

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shelley (2)
- hill
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ninakuriloff (1)
- landscape
spiceytaco (1)
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Yvette (3)
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- sheep
- land
cjn212 (8)
- shepherdess
- sheep
- flock
- somber
- gray
- grey
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sassyass (11)
- sheep
- shepherd
- shepherdess
- lamb
- eye
- stormy
- clouds
- dismal
- gloomy
- depressing
- doom and gloom

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