Shepherd and Flock among Haystacks, Signed Oil on Canvas by Gaston Guignard, 19th Century, Framed

The shepherd is the one dark note in the picture. Everything else is grey and pale straw, and he stands at the centre of it.

Oil on canvas, 12 1/2 x 16 inches (32 x 41 cm), framed 18 1/2 x 22 inches (47 x 56 cm). Signed Gaston Guignard lower left. 19th century, in a moulded gilt frame.

Four haystacks stand across the middle distance, built high and rounded in the way of the French harvest, with a flock moving past them from the left and a dog running at its edge. A flight of birds crosses the sky above the stacks and gives the only movement in the upper half of the canvas. The sheep are three or four touches each and nothing more, yet they read unmistakably as a flock in motion.

The canvas has never been relined. It carries a fine age craquelure across the sky, of the kind that comes with a thin grey passage of this date, and the colourman stamp of Alexis Ottoz, 46 Rue Notre Dame de Lorette, is still legible on the reverse, where a lining would have hidden it. The gilt frame carries an acanthus outer course and a beaded inner one over a wide slip.

The light is low and diffused, the sky worked thin and grey with a single pale opening near the horizon. It is the only warmth in the picture, and everything in the field is turned toward it.