A Man and a Youth ploughing with Oxen

In 1876 the trustees of the National Gallery were handed an unusual choice. Wynn Ellis, a silk merchant who had bought Dutch pictures for half a century, left them the right to pick whatever they wanted from a list of 403 old paintings. They took 94, and this small canvas was one of them. Berchem probably painted it in the first half of the 1650s. Here his countryfolk are hard at work. A man leans his weight into a simple wooden plough while a youth with a whip drives the pair of oxen up a stony slope, under a chalky cliff and a heap of white cloud. The Gallery's own description notes the ploughman's sunburn and his shabby shirt, which still gleams white in the sun. It hangs in Room 27.