Killing a Deer

Dated 1867 and now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts et d'Archéologie de Besançon, this large-scale hunting subject depicts the moment of the deer's death — a subject Courbet addressed repeatedly across his hunting paintings, bringing to it the same Realist insistence on the physical fact of killing that characterized his approach to all subject matter. Unlike the graceful stag-at-bay of the academic tradition, Courbet's dying deer are presented in the full physical intensity of the hunt's actual drama. The Besançon museum, near Courbet's native Ornans, holds significant works from his estate and from regional collecting and is one of the key repositories of his Franche-Comté subjects.

The dramatic scene required Courbet to integrate figures, horses, dogs, and the dying animal in a unified action painting context. Winter landscape or forest setting would be handled with his full palette-knife landscape technique. The animal itself — in the physical extremity of death — is rendered with the visceral directness characteristic of his hunting subjects.