In this work, Telemachos Kanthos rendered what was to him the familiar landscape of his birthplace, Alona, combined with a scene from agrarian daily life; a daily life which Kanthos knew very well, since up to the age of 13 he had lived in the village with his mother, whom he often helped with her work in the fields and tending to the family’s livestock. He maintained enduring and especially close ties to his village, returning to it regularly up to the end of his life, especially in the summer months.

Therefore, the depiction of scenes from the life of farmers was not the result of a bourgeois painter’s romantic love of bucolic themes, but of a strong experiential connection between the artist and the villages and their world; a world which he applauded and loved and hence presented harmoniously linked with nature. In Kanthos’ paintings we do not find the farmer who is living a hardscrabble life, struggling and suffering for his daily bread. The artist gave us a farmer at peace with his world and focused on the agrarian ethos, portraying an era which he lived in and was now watching as it gradually changed.

In this particular canvas, the painter reconciled realism and poetry. A shepherdess, leaning against the trunk of a tree, watches as her few goats graze in a fenced field. The dry summer earth does not have enough grass to feed the animals, so the central goat, standing on its hind legs, is nibbling the leaves or the fruit of a tree. The goats, like the shepherdess, constitute an extension of the landscape. The painter’s palette, considerably limited, is a calm dialogue between shades of yellow, blue and their derivative, green. Using this colour trilogy, the painter constructed the work through sensitively juxtaposing warm with cool shades. Opting for bold, broad brushstrokes, he created large surfaces with which he conveyed overall space. The natural environment and the organic subjects are portrayed quite abstractedly and schematically. The painting is organised diagonally, and the composition is balanced and harmonious, emanating a peaceful atmosphere – the one the artist seems to have been reminiscing about and striving for.