Nowadays, sheep are frequently depicted - on greetings cards and in artworks, as knitted, wooden and suchlike items primarily for the gift and tourist trade, and in books, films and, television - in a cartoon way. Why is this? What’s so funny?
It was not always thus. The link with sheep and Christianity once meant that depictions of sheep showed them respect and honour. In days of apogee of the wool trade, sheep were of value, so they had attention and needed to be regarded seriously. As, from the eighteenth century onwards, farming overall began to become more technical in process and industrial in type, a crescendo - sort of Luddite - reaction grew to see and paint farming as bucolic. As part of this, sheep would be portrayed romantically, set in a romantic landscape. By the time of the Pre-Raphaelites, painters were often still depicting sheep romantically, but too were using them as metaphors to comment about religion, and about society.
Showing an altered and more realistic way of seeing sheep and farming are the drawings of Harry Becker from the First World War period onward until his death in 1928. Becker was not romanticising farming, he was recording it; with perception and in ‘quite modern’ economical manner.
Becker was, however, telling a truth not much longer to stay. By the end of the Second World War, in the developed world at least, change was starting to occur in ways and approaches of farming, as was happening in society at large. Aggrandisement - amalgamations of farms, up-sizing due to mechanisation, and so on - were delivering altered ways of seeing and doing farming, and, as part of this, livestock farming. Distancing is an inevitable outcome. No shepherd or farmer can see a huge flock of sheep in quite the same way as a small one, in which latter circumstance each sheep would be known well and individually to them. Increasingly, meanwhile, more members of the general public live in cities not villages, or at least do not reside - as was once a norm - in one rural community and whose mainstay would likely be agriculture.
The instances of a sheep farmer losing some close familiarity with each sheep, and of many of the public not seeing directly farm and farming process, represent separation. The public nowadays has little direct sight and knowledge of farm and farm animals. So is produced a breeding ground for reality not to be known by the general populace.
With public distance from sheep, with possibly no sight ever for the public of real sheep, with the public having no actual familiarity of how a sheep actually looks, does the public have a false impression of sheep? We know that, apparently, many people see sheep as stupid. Do many among the general public extend from this, and actually see sheep as a joke? Does unfamiliarity breed misapprehension? Or is the idea of the sheep as a figure of fun a cynical introduction to the public? Is it that sheep being depicted as comic results from product provider aim and thinking? Does the provider perceive that those ovine-portraying items sell best which portray sheep as jokes? Has the provider decided to ‘throw truth to the wolves’ because to do so sells the most products?
Whatever the reason for the, so often comedic, contemporary depiction of sheep, what a sad circumstance, and how disrespectful to sheep and disregarding of the reality.
12th April 2021