Renaissance -19th century · Season, movement and relationship with the wild

Hunting painting brings together landscape, animals and action to tell the story of territory, power, survival or violence.

Long linked to classes and aristocracy, hunting became a genre where artists demonstrated their mastery of movement, animal anatomy and landscape. Bruegel places the return of hunters in the cycle of a collective winter. Rubens transforms the confrontation with the wild animals into a baroque whirlwind. Delacroix takes up this energy through color and diagonality. Courbet gives hallali a more material and critical presence, where snow, dogs, men and deer share the same drama. The "Hunting Paintings" selection notably compares Hunters in the Snow - Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Lion Hunting - Eugène Delacroix. His reading favors color.

In these scenes, the hunt is never just a pursuit: it reveals a society, a territory and a way of representing power.