Video Highlights

Opening Lecture for Pastoral on Paper (54 Minutes)

Exhibition curator and student in the Williams College/Clark Graduate Program in the History of Art William Satloff introduces the concept of the pastoral landscape. Surveying the rich array of books, drawings, paintings, and prints presented in the exhibition, Satloff explores how leading artists of the Baroque and Rococo periods envisioned the idyllic lives of shepherds.

Recorded Live at The Clark on April 12th, 2025 (58 Minutes)

In this lecture, Paul Holberton, author of the acclaimed two-volume book A History of Arcadia in Art and Literature (2021), examines how idyllic landscapes and rustic scenes have been portrayed from antiquity through the Renaissance and into the eighteenth century. Presented in coordination with Pastoral on Paper, Dr. Holberton discusses the nuanced textual origins of the pastoral genre, from Virgil’s adaptations of Theocritus to the influence of medieval pastourelles. Responding to leading early modern literary and artistic luminaries such as Torquato Tasso, Claude Lorrain, and Thomas Gainsborough, Dr. Holberton traces the complex journey of the pastoral across cultures and eras.