On the verso of The Little Shepherdess, in Dorothea Sharp's hand, the artist records the painting's location: "Tossa (Tossa de Mar) near Barcelona". Tossa is a fortified medieval fishing town 60 miles north of Barcelona and a similiar distance from the French border. This ancient Catalan town is framed on one side by the ocean and behind by low lying mountains where olive, grape and cork plantations have been cultivated for centuries. It is in the mountains behind Tossa that our present work is set. 

As Helen Entwistle states in The Biography of Dorothea Sharp. Rockpools and Sunshine; “To convey a fleeting, perfect moment who better than children in a nursery or at play on a beach. A young goatherd or shepherdess bringing a flock through a valley creates a picture which is immensely satisfying to the eye.” A young shepherdess or goatherd was a subject that the artist returned to time and again during her winter travels between southern France and Algiers; other examples are The Young Goatherds and a very similiar composition, The Young Goatherd. In The Little Shepherdess Sharp, who had an intuitive sense and love of colour, has chosen a complementary palette of lemon and sky blue. The effect is quite wonderful.

In 1931 Dorothea was awarded the RBA’s Bronze Award for her picture Goat Boy. Painted in Cassis near Marseille in Southern France, the painting shares much in subject, composition and style with The Little Shepherdess. Sharp's 1936 submission to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1936 was In the Green Pool, Tossa, so we additionally know that the artist was in Tossa during the winter of 1935/36. Whilst Sharp rarely if ever dated her paintings, the present work is therefore likely to date from the same early to mid 30s period when Sharp was wintering in Europe, with Marcella Smith and spending Spring and Summer in St Ives. On the basis of the Tossa RA submission we have dated The Little Shepherdess c. 1935.