# A Seated Shepherdess

- By: Jules Dupré (French, 1811–1889)
- Date: c. 1836
- Medium: black chalk with white heightening and white pastel on brown paper laid down on board
- Classification: Drawing
- Dimensions: Sheet: 61.1 x 47.6 cm (24 1/16 x 18 3/4 in.)
- Culture: France, 19th century
- Credit line: Bequest of Muriel Butkin
- Museum: [Cleveland Museum of Art](https://clevelandart.org/art/2009.314)
- Rights: [Public domain (CC0)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://invisiblenetwork.ai/thumbs/cma/2009.314/2009.314_web.jpg
- Who can see it: Tweens profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

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.