The Herd at the Watering Place

"The Herd at the Watering Place" by Claude Lorrain (born Claude Gellée, 1600-1682) is a significant example of 17th-century French printmaking, executed in 1635. This work is an etching, demonstrating Lorrain’s remarkable facility for rendering vast, atmospheric scenes through the delicate lines and tonal contrasts inherent to the medium. Although celebrated primarily for his dramatic, light-filled paintings, Lorrain was also a highly successful printmaker, producing nearly fifty etchings throughout his career that spread his compositional innovations across Europe.

The piece depicts a pastoral scene characteristic of the Classical landscape genre that the artist formalized and popularized. The composition focuses on livestock—cows and other animals—gathered around a tranquil watering place at dusk or dawn. This setting, framed by dense trees and receding topographical elements, serves as an idealized vision of nature, reflecting the French Baroque preference for balanced and harmonized rural settings. Lorrain masterfully employs sophisticated light effects, utilizing the white of the paper to suggest luminous haze and depth, a quality consistently found in his larger-scale works.

This specific impression of the print is preserved in the collections of the Cleveland Museum of Art. As a leading figure of 17th-century France, Lorrain established enduring precedents for atmospheric depth and historical narrative within landscape composition. Today, because of its age and cultural importance, the work and many other early prints by Lorrain are frequently made available through public domain initiatives, ensuring broad access to the artistic output of this foundational master printmaker.