Young Shepherdess

Bouguereau came back to the young shepherdess again and again for more than 20 years, and this canvas from 1868 is one of the early ones. In the 1880s the type grew into tall, full-length pictures of barefoot girls, canvases more than 150 centimetres high, like the versions now in San Diego and in Tulsa. This one is closer and plainer, about a metre high, with the girl cut off below the knees. She rests her arms on a shepherd's staff in front of a rough wooden fence, a red scarf over her hair, while her flock grazes on the slope behind. The museum's own description picks out the qualities he gave her, gentleness and vigilance among them. She came to Ocala as a gift from Arthur I. Appleton, who bred thoroughbred horses nearby and opened the museum to house his collection in 1987.