The Newborn Lamb after William Bouguereau, Antique Photogravure, circa 1880

A young shepherdess stands barefoot on a woodland path, cradling a newborn lamb against her chest and looking down at it with quiet tenderness. Beside her, a long-fleeced ewe stretches up her neck toward the lamb, mouth open as if calling to it. The girl wears a headscarf, a loose blouse and a long apron over her skirt, and the soft folds of the cloth are rendered with the same care as the curls of the ewe's wool. Behind the pair, leafy trees and a tangle of brambles close in, with a glimpse of open ground at the left.

The picture reproduces William Bouguereau's painting known as L'Agneau nouveau-né (The Newborn Lamb); the painter's signature and the date 1873 can be read in the image at lower left. Bouguereau was one of the most admired academic painters of nineteenth-century France, celebrated for exactly this kind of idealized rural figure, painted with a smooth, polished finish. The margin is lettered "Peint par W. Bouguereau" at left and "Photogravure & Imp. Goupil & Cie" at right, the line of the Paris house of Goupil and Cie, which made and printed the plate. Goupil was the leading publisher of reproductions after contemporary French painting, and its photogravures carried the work of Salon painters to collectors across Europe and America.

Photogravure is an intaglio process in which a photograph of the painting is etched into a copper plate and printed in ink. It gives a continuous, velvety tone that a line engraving cannot match, and here it preserves the soft modeling of the girl's face and arms and the fine detail of the foliage. The print is in a warm black on cream paper, with a plate mark surrounding the image and the lettering.

The upright format and gentle subject would sit well in a bedroom, a nursery or a hallway, framed simply in gilt or pale wood.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed.