17th -20th century · pastoral, nourishing and modernity

From the pastoral trade of Berchem to the Amalthea of Jordaens, then to the goats of Pissarro and Franz Marc, the animal connects subsistence, myth, landscape and modern form.

In Dutch pastoral painting, the goat belongs to a concrete economy as much as to a rural ideal. Nicolaes Berchem shows a shepherdess milking: gesture, container and herd give the landscape a nourishing activity. Jacob Jordaens transposes this function into the myth of Amalthea, the goat who feeds Jupiter as a child; abundance of bodies and baroque energy make milk a divine origin. Camille Pissarro observes a woman and a goat in Éragny in an environment worked by light and touch, without disguising rural life as a golden age. Franz Marc, with his little mountain goats, simplifies anatomy, slope and color in order to match the animal to its middle. The goat thus goes from daily resource to nurse of the gods, then to motif of pictorial experience. The "Goat Paintings" selection notably compares Shepherdess milking a goat and Jupiter as a child fed by the goat Amalthea. His reading favors drawing.

The goat occupies the painting without imposed solemnity: its balance, its milk and its human proximity are enough to connect everyday life to myth.