A Shepherd and a Young Woman With Their Feet in a Brook

Art Historical Context

Salomon Gessner’s *A Shepherd and a Young Woman With Their Feet in a Brook* (1764) captures an idyllic moment of rural life in delicate detail. The etching shows two figures resting at the edge of a stream, their bare feet touching the water amid lush foliage and soft light. Created on laid paper tinted pale blue, the print evokes the gentle atmosphere of a summer afternoon and reflects the eighteenth-century fascination with pastoral simplicity. Gessner, a Swiss artist, writer, and publisher, was celebrated for his scenes of harmonious nature. Working during the late Rococo period, he blended refined elegance with an emerging taste for natural sentiment that would later influence Romantic artists. His prints often accompanied his own poetry, spreading ideals of peaceful countryside living across Europe through affordable, widely circulated editions. As an etching, this work highlights the period’s growing interest in printmaking as both an artistic and democratic medium. The intimate scale—roughly eight by seven inches for the plate—invites close viewing, allowing museum visitors today to appreciate the fine lines and subtle tonal effects that made Gessner’s vision of tranquility so enduring.

About the Artist

Salomon Gessner · 1730–1788

Salomon Gessner was born in Zurich in 1730 into a family of printers and publishers, an upbringing that placed books, images, and ideas at the center of his world from an early age. Though largely self-taught as a visual artist, he received some instruction during a period in Berlin, where he encountered the German Rococo tradition, and his mature work reflects a deep absorption in the pastoral li...