7169-7193; 7217-7222 Valentina N. Berezina, The Hermitage. Catalogue of Western European Painting. French Painting Early and Mid-Nineteenth Century, New York – Florence, 1983. #86, page 110. Landscape with a Dead Horse Oil on Canvas 45 x 56 cm. If this painting has a specific narrative reference, the source is unknown. But the depiction of a dead animal with twisted legs and swollen belly is characteristic of Courbet, whose interest in portraying unprettified, even harsh reality – as opposed to the sweet idealism and falsity of academia and “Salon” art – is well known. In 1857 Les Fleurs du mal, by his friend Charles Baudelaire, was published. The poem “Une charogne” (Carrion), though clearly not a direct source for the Hermitage painting, manifests a close affinity between the poet and the painter of this work—namely, their common interest in the daring and truthful representation of the aesthetically unseemly aspects of life. Painted in the second half of the 1850s. It has been established that landscape painting did not interest Courbet before the mid-1850s; this picture was acquired by N. A. Kushelev-Bezborodko not later than 1861. [dead horse ravine true.jpg]
7169-7193; 7217-7222 FAUX
aa [Etching after Landseer Dead Horse Example VIII]
