Herder with Ewe and Lamb, 1859

John Gardner Low (1835-1907), who painted this charming barnyard scene, is much better known as a ceramicist. Indeed the company he founded with his father in 1877, the J. & J. G. Low Art Tile Works in Chelsea, Massachusetts, produced the tile that surrounds the fireplace in this room. Before he and his father began the tile works, J. G. Low had a successful career as a painter of landscapes and theater curtains. This small gem was completed in Paris, where Low lived for three years in the 1850s, training with Constant Troyan and Thomas Couture who also taught Boston luminaries William Morris Hunt and John Lafarge, among others.