Study of Pigs

Study of Pigs from 1855 reveals a lesser-known dimension of Decamps's practice: his sustained interest in animal subjects rooted in close empirical observation. Though celebrated primarily for his Orientalist scenes, Decamps was a skilled animal painter who kept animals near his studio and sketched them repeatedly. The subject — pigs rendered without sentimentality or moralizing — aligns with the broader Realist impulse gaining ground in French painting during the 1850s, as artists increasingly turned to unglamorous rural and domestic subjects as legitimate artistic material. Courbet had already shocked the Salon with monumental paintings of peasant life; Decamps's smaller animal studies participate in this recalibration of subject matter, arguing through practice that no creature was beneath the painter's serious attention. The Art Institute of Chicago preserves this work as evidence of his range beyond the Orientalist canon.

Working in oil, Decamps captured the bristled texture of pig hide through short, directional brushstrokes that follow the body's surface. His handling of the animals' rounded forms against the ground demonstrates a sculptor's sensitivity to volume, with tonal modeling rather than outline defining each form.