A Seated Shepherdess

Unique for Jules Dupré, who mostly recorded landscapes, this sheet features a woman holding a crook for herding sheep. Many middle-class collectors at the time were eager for images of rural life while cities grew and factories proliferated. Cleveland’s drawing forms a pair with a similar depiction of a male shepherd, also created using wetted and burnished white pastel on earthy brown paper. It is one of numerous objects in these galleries formerly owned by Clevelander Muriel Butkin, a passionate scholar and collector of French art from the 1800s who bequeathed nearly 300 drawings to the museum.