The Lord is my shepherd

The psalm has no story to illustrate. Painters turn to the shepherd himself, or to someone who reads the words.

Murillo paints the shepherd as a child. He sits among ruins with his staff, one hand resting on a sheep, and looks straight at us.

A man sits by the hearth and reads the Bible. Johnson painted the picture in 1863, the year of the Emancipation Proclamation, and gave it the first words of the psalm as its title.

A low farmhouse under tall trees, everything in gold and green. The shepherd is a small figure in front of the house, with his flock close around him. Tanner returned to this subject again and again in his later years.