How you can use this image

This image can be used for non-commercial research or private study purposes, and other UK exceptions to copyright permitted to users based in the United Kingdom under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, as amended and revised. Any other type of use will need to be cleared with the rights holder(s).

Review the copyright credit lines that are located underneath the image, as these indicate who manages the copyright (©) within the artwork, and the photographic rights within the image.

The collection that owns the artwork may have more information on their own website about permitted uses and image licensing options.

Review our guidance pages which explain how you can reuse images, how to credit an image and how to find images in the public domain or with a Creative Commons licence available.

Buy a print or image licence

You can purchase this reproduction

If you have any products in your basket we recommend that you complete your purchase from Art UK before you leave our site to avoid losing your purchases.

Order a print

Notes

Add or edit a note on this artwork that only you can see. You can find notes again by going to the ‘Notes’ section of your account.

Rubens has created the impression of a wide-open space by depicting a point of interest in the right foreground -- the shepherd watching over his sheep -- then using the strong diagonal lines of the river, the road, the edges of the clouds and the raking light to trick our eye. Like the shepherd, we are drawn into gazing out across the landscape, the elevated viewpoint giving the impression that we are seeing further into the distance.Most of Rubens’s landscapes were made in the last five years of his life, on his new estate in the countryside of Brabant outside Antwerp. As well as evoking a view, his pictures allude to ideas of rural bliss derived from classical authors. Rubens was doing more than reflecting a contemporary pastoral scene -- he was demonstrating his literary learning and, by implication, elevating the countryside of his native land to the same cultural status as that of Roman Italy and Ancient Greece.

The National Gallery, London

London

Title

A Landscape with a Shepherd and his Flock

Date

about 1638

Medium

Oil on oak

Measurements

H 49.4 x W 83.5 cm

Accession number

NG157

Acquisition method

Bequeathed by Lord Farnborough, 1839

Work type

Painting

The National Gallery, London

Trafalgar Square, London, Greater London WC2N 5DN England

View venue

Artist or maker

Peter Paul Rubens

1577–1640

View profile

War and Victory Victoria and Albert Museum
George Villiers (1592–1628), 1st Duke of Buckingham Pollok House
Nature and Her Followers Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum
Head of an Old Man English Heritage, The Wellington Collection, Apsley House
Ana Dorotea, Daughter of Rudolph II, a Nun at the Convent of the Descalzas Reales, Madrid English Heritage, The Wellington Collection, Apsley House
Adoration of the Shepherds Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford
Abraham and Melchisedek Glynn Vivian Art Gallery
282 more