1819 -1877 · realism, hunting and forests of the Jura

Courbet paints the deer as a real body subjected to cold, fatigue, rutting and hunting; the Jura forest becomes a dense material where the animal fights, flees or stays on the lookout.

Gustave Courbet was born in Ornans in 1819 and made the Franche-Comté territory the center of his realism. In Paris, he refused academic idealization and affirmed that a painter must represent the customs, ideas and appearance of his time. After the great manifestos of the years 1849 -1855, from 1857 he developed a vast set of hunting scenes. Courbet knew this practice directly and observed the forests, dogs, tracks and animals of the Jura. La Curé, presented at the Salon of 1857, publicly inaugurated this cycle. Courbet knew this practice directly and observed the forests, dogs, tracks and animals of the Jura. La Curé, presented at the Salon of 1857, publicly inaugurated this cycle. Courbet knew this practice directly and observed the forests, dogs, tracks and animals of the Jura. La Curé, presented at the Salon of 1857, publicly inaugurated this cycle. Courbet knew this practice directly and observed the forests, dogs, tracks and animals of the Jura. La Curé, presented at the Salon of 1857, publicly inaugurated this cycle. Courbet knew this practice directly and observed the forests, dogs, tracks and animals of the Jura. La Curé, presented at the Salon of 1857, publicly inaugurated this cycle vulnerability. In winter landscapes, hooves sink into the snow and the breath seems to respond to the cold air. In the fights of the rut, branches and shoulders collide with compact violence. The Deer Hallali takes the hunting scene to a monumental scale: dogs, snow, huntsmen and exhausted animals build tension without heroic ideals. Other paintings, on the contrary, show the return to dusk, the deer in the water or a family near a fall, moments when animal observation merges with the landscape. Pictorial material plays an essential role. Courbet uses knife, brush, friction and impasto to give rocks, bark, snow and coat a common density. The deer thus seems to emerge from the same physical world as the forest. These works enjoyed significant commercial success and allowed the artist to renew the genres of hunting, landscape and animal painting. Courbet died in exile in Switzerland in 1877. A faithful reproduction must preserve the deep blacks, the earths, the broken whites, the texture of the undergrowth and the bodily energy of the animal without smoothing the material. The "Cerfs de Gustave Courbet" selection notably compares L'Hallali du Cerf - Gustave Courbet and Le Rut du Printemps. Deer fighting - Gustave Courbet. His reading favors color.

The Courbet deer is neither emblem nor trophy: it is a body that weighs, breathes, exhausts itself and shares the same terrestrial matter with the forest.