Man Riding a Donkey

With his legs draped to one side, the protagonist in Nicolaes Berchem’s Man Riding a Donkey demonstrates the docile nature of his animal and the relative ease of riding. He peers behind him at a woman, perhaps his wife, who carries a basket atop her head and pulls two sheep along. The donkey noses two more sheep ahead of him, while a cluster has decided to rest in the dust on the roadside. Inspired by the Italian countryside, the rolling and faintly etched hills reflect the simplicity of the shepherds’ idealized lifestyle. The animals support this theme through their actions by lazily meandering and lying peacefully in the sun.

A prolific and multitalented artist, Berchem painted and drew many landscapes, night scenes, battles, seascapes, and historical subjects. In his printmaking, Berchem solely used etching to create his primary subject matter of shepherds and their livestock within idyllic Italian settings. While Cornelis Dusart (1660–1704) stereotyped the rowdy behavior of rural workers in The Village Fair, Berchem and other Dutch Italianate artists romanticized the simplicity and humility of country life. Berchem upheld this treatment of his subjects throughout his artistic career, but in his later etchings he pushes the main figures to the back of his compositions, devoting more attention to the shapes and textures of the landscapes.

This impression represents the second state out of three, identifiable by the faint clouds in the sky that were only added after the first state. In the final state, the sky is heavily reworked in what Hollstein describes as a “strange hand,” likely either a pupil within Berchem’s workshop or another artist. Created after his first Animalia series, also featured in this catalogue, Man Riding a Donkey was Berchem’s first individual print. A collector’s mark on the back of the paper features the initials “JR,” but cannot be linked with a known collector. 

Written by Thomas Dowd, edited by Simone Edgar Holmes

Bibliography

Hollstein, F.W.H. Hollstein’s Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings, and Woodcuts, ca. 1450-1700 Vol. VI. Amsterdam: Hertzberger, 1952.

Kilian, Jennifer M. “Berchem [Berghem; Berighem; Berrighem], Nicolaes.” Grove Art Online. 2003. https://www-oxfordartonline-com.ezproxy.middlebury.edu/groveart/view/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.001.0001/oao-9781884446054-e-7000008022.

Wuestmen, Gerdien. “Berchem as an etcher: Effortless, accomplished and peerless.” In Nicolaes Berchem: In the Light of Italy. Edited by Karel Schampers. Haarlem: Ludion, 2006.