Trout

Dated 1873 and now in the Musée d'Orsay, this small-scale still life of a trout on a riverbank was painted during Courbet's Swiss exile — one of the intimate still-life subjects he produced while dealing with the enormous legal and financial aftermath of the Commune. The trout still life has a specific precedent in the Dutch vanitas tradition and in Flemish game-painting, but Courbet's version is stripped of allegorical charge. This is simply a fish, observed with complete material attention — its specific species characteristics (brown trout, with spotted flanks), the way its scales catch light, the hook still in its mouth. The last detail — the hook — has been read by some as self-referential, Courbet himself at this point 'caught' by the judicial system.

Trout scales present a complex optical challenge: each scale overlaps the next and has its own reflective surface, yet the whole creates a continuous pattern. Courbet described this layered reflectivity through short, overlapping strokes that convey both individual scales and their collective iridescence. The fish's color — olive-green back, golden flanks, red spots — required careful color mixing.