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Lot Essay
A staunch realist, Gustave Courbet painted mainly nudes, portraits and landscapes. But also, as an enthusiastic sportsman, Courbet began to specialize in forest and hunting scenes during the late 1850s. Courbet's depictions of deer, whether set in a snowy forest or a summer landscape set deep within the woods, are among his most beloved works. Painted in the forests of the Jura, a mountainous region in eastern France, probably in the 1860s, the the present work depicts a family of deer with a waterfall in the distance surrounded by luxurious vegetation and a river.
Compared to the craft of portraiture, painting wild animals presented a different challenge. While humans could be expected to sit still, deer made the most skittish models and by attempting to portray them, the ever boastful Courbet was stressing his ability to make lightning fast observations and renditions (Although Courbet did confess to using deer from butcher shops as models on occasion). In this respect, landscapes such as these should be understood as counterparts to Courbet's many late 1860s paintings of crashing waves, likewise conceived to suggest his heroic abilities to capture split-second wonders still beyond the capacity of a camera.
It has been said that paintings such as A Family of Deer in a Landscape with a Waterfall mark a retreat on Courbet's part from the outwardly political and anti-clerical artistic statements that made him so notorious. While Courbet's landscapes with deer are certainly beautiful realistic observations of wildlife and the natural environment, they are also eloquent and proud proclamations of the provincial terroir, of the landscape of his native Franche-Comté, versus the metropolis and the regime of Napoleon III whose political ideology he deeply opposed. Some would argue that the painting can be read as a potent statement of the realist credo, the raising of humble and unassuming subject matter to the level of high art, a moving affirmation of the artist's love of nature and his rural allegiance as well as a declaration of his position versus the capital and its political and artistic establishment.
Jean-Jacque Fernier will include this work in the supplement of his forthcoming catalogue raisonné.
Compared to the craft of portraiture, painting wild animals presented a different challenge. While humans could be expected to sit still, deer made the most skittish models and by attempting to portray them, the ever boastful Courbet was stressing his ability to make lightning fast observations and renditions (Although Courbet did confess to using deer from butcher shops as models on occasion). In this respect, landscapes such as these should be understood as counterparts to Courbet's many late 1860s paintings of crashing waves, likewise conceived to suggest his heroic abilities to capture split-second wonders still beyond the capacity of a camera.
It has been said that paintings such as A Family of Deer in a Landscape with a Waterfall mark a retreat on Courbet's part from the outwardly political and anti-clerical artistic statements that made him so notorious. While Courbet's landscapes with deer are certainly beautiful realistic observations of wildlife and the natural environment, they are also eloquent and proud proclamations of the provincial terroir, of the landscape of his native Franche-Comté, versus the metropolis and the regime of Napoleon III whose political ideology he deeply opposed. Some would argue that the painting can be read as a potent statement of the realist credo, the raising of humble and unassuming subject matter to the level of high art, a moving affirmation of the artist's love of nature and his rural allegiance as well as a declaration of his position versus the capital and its political and artistic establishment.
Jean-Jacque Fernier will include this work in the supplement of his forthcoming catalogue raisonné.