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PLATE XXXI. CHIENS ET LIEVRE (DOGS AND HARE)
IN the Salon of 1857 Courbet had also, besides a landscape and two portraits, two hunting scenes, the first of a series which he continually extended. "La Biche Forcee a la Neige " (in the Douville-Maillefeu collection) has often been reproduced. Against the vast stretch of snow, pierced by rust-coloured bushes, the beast, a magnificently coated creature, is shown dying in the foreground. In the distance there are five exasperatingly absurd dogs, absurd in form, colour, and movement. They are so absurd that one cannot object to the critics who refused to make any allowance for them.
"La Curee du Chevreuil," also called "Chasse au Chevreuil dans les Forets du Grand Jura," on the other hand, was justly admired. The picture was sold for 8,000 francs to M. Vanisack, of Antwerp, by him given to M. Luquet, and sold in 1866 for 25,000 francs to the Alston Club, of Boston. Judging by the lithographs of Celestin Nanteuil and Emile Vernier, it must be one of the painter's masterpieces.
In a wood of tall pines the deer is shown hung by its feet from a tree. In the delicate handling of the pelt, and the magnificent poise and weight of the body, the painter has created an admirable still-life. Standing up in a blouse, shoulders back, gaitered, with arms folded, Courbet is listening to the huntsman sounding his horn. Two dogs, dappled with brown spots, are bounding towards the stag. The picture is one of animal vigour and religious grandeur.
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About, Gautier, Maxime du Camp, Castagnary, all praised the picture as it deserved; though, of course, not without certain reservations with regard to detail. Castagnary, for instance, was surprised that dogs, with the bodies of bassets, should have the coats of brachhounds, and About, who acknowledged their coarse quality of life, and admired the " powerful, skilful painting," seems to be thinking wistfully of the dogs of Desportes. But we have every reason to suppose that such cavilling was only introduced into their notices to avoid breaking away from their settled habit of criticizing Courbet.
The two dogs of the "Curee" are shown, identically reproduced in the splendid picture here reproduced, which a short time ago left the Durand-Ruel collection for New York. The pine woods have become an oak forest; the huntsmen have disappeared; the stag has been replaced by a hare. But the two dogs are just the same, and give us no reason to think regretfully of the exact Desportes, nor of the work of any more powerful animal painter sirice his time.
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PLATE XXXII. CHASSEURS EN FORET (SPORTSMEN IN A WOOD)
ANOT HER fault found with Courbet, with regard to his hunting series, was particularly unfortunate. About accused him of not knowing how to hold a horn, and Maxime du Camp suspected him of not knowing that hunting in the snow had been prohibited in 1844. "It is no great matter," he added, " but I understood that the realists only painted what they saw."
In these pictures Courbet painted not only what he saw, but what he lived. He was a great hunter, and even, as he says in one of his letters, " an incorrigible poacher." In the year 1853 he came into conflict with the police, after having walked over the whole countryside, " over hills and valleys, up to his thighs in snow," after hares and wolves.
In 1859, at Frankfort, he distinguished himself by his prowess, of which he was no less proud than of his fame as a painter. On Saint-Sylvestre's day he had a "superb adventure," which he recounted to his sister Juliette as follows: "In the mountains of Germany I killed an enormous stag, a stag of twelve points. ... It is the largest that has been killed in Germany for twenty-five years. He weighed, with an empty stomach, 274 pounds; in summer, alive, he would have weighed 400 pounds. The whole of Germany is jealous of my adventure. The Grand Duke of Darmstadt said he would have given a thousand florins for it not to have happened. ..." The Society of Sportsmen had to intervene to restore the head of the beast to him, for it had been taken from him. "It is a splendid story; the whole town has been
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agog with it for a month. The newspapers took it up. . . . On top of it all, a sportsman gave a dinner at which 700 glasses of Bavarian beer were drunk." However, Castagnary was sometimes right in saying that Courbet's andscapes seemed to have been seen from the windows of a tavern: "His scenes always give one the idea of a jolly good meal; one thinks of fried fish whisking down his streams and all around, along his thickets, there hovers the scent of stewed rabbit." It is exaggerated, perhaps, but failing stewed rabbit, one can always guess that there are hares hiding in Courbet's woods. Even when he takes us far from " gardens and woods," his landscapes are full of strong vegetable smells, and not conducive to peaceful dreams, and one fancies that at any moment the crack of a gun may ring out through his forests.
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PLATE XXXIII. LE COMBAT DE CERFS (THE STAG FIGHT)
COURBET had been an enthusiastic spectator of stag-fights in the parks at Hamburg and Wiesbaden. But it was at Frankfort, after his great shooting adventure, that he began his great picture. The artist had had the head of his victim stuffed and hung with a similar trophy in a studio in the Museum, which was placed at his disposal by the Director, Professor Jacob Becker. On the other side of the Maine, near an inn supplied with excellent ham and a very creditable white wine, was a little wood which gave him his background.
The picture was finished in less than a week. Courbet replied bluntly to Professor Becker, who timidly expressed his regret that the leaves were not drawn in sufficient detail: "Herr Becker, you are certainly a good professor of anatomy, but you will never be anything but a dunce in painting!" And as there were many capable interpreters in Frankfort, the remark cut short the relation of the two artists. Courbet returned to Ornans. There he altered his landscape, having found a more suitable scene in the Jura.
"Le Combat de Cerfs," also known as " Le Rut du Printemps," was shown in the Salon of 1861. It was another success, to which Olivier Merson has borne notable witness. "It is," he said, " the best picture yet exhibited by M. Courbet. Every detail is closely studied, and painted roundly and satisfyingly. The earth is solid; the leaves, the grass, the brambles, are perfectly painted; one can feel the leaves trembling and rustling. The tone of the leaves, the texture of the bark,
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rough or smooth, the accentuation of the silhouettes are varied with consummate skill and knowledge. The background has an almost solemn depth; the foreground is virile and powerful; even in those parts of the picture which seem most impetuously done, there is revealed the calculation of an artist who is master of his brush and of his palette, and all these qualities are beautifully united in the vigour and harmony of the colour. . . . M. Courbet has sounded an admirable note. Will he be able to keep it up ? "
The State offered to buy "Le Combat de Cerfs," but the negotiations fell through. The picture was shown at the Antwerp Exhibition in 1861, at the private exhibition in 1867, and at the great sale of 1881 it was finally bought for 41,900 francs. It should be seen in the Louvre on a fine sunny morning. The light then gives life to the usually opaque background, and revives the former splendour of the underwoods.
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PLATE XXXIV. LE CHASSEUR D'EAU (THE WATER HUNTER)
THE Salons of 1857 and 1861 contained most of Courbet's output as a painter o£ hunting " scenes. In the latter exhibition he had, besides "Le Combat de Cerf ," "Un Cerf a I'Eau," "Un Renard dans la Neige," and "Un Piqueur et son Cheval." The last picture was thought absurd, and "worthy of the painter in his worst days." The artist tried to make it better subsequently, but under its new title, "Le Cheval Derobe," it is still a very bad picture. However, Courbet was soon to receive, for a new picture of the same series, the most unanimous chorus of praise that he ever provoked in the whole course of his long career. In the Salon of 1866, his famous " Remise des Chevreuils" met with nothing but praise. All those who had hitherto been shocked by the strong personality and the rather brutal talent of the painter, were loud in their admiration of this almost insignificantly charming picture. The numerous deer that Courbet painted from this model, "all as pleasing as those of the 'Remise,' " as he said in an unpublished letter in the Doucet library (February 13, 1870), always found a public. A "Cerf aux Ecoutes " of the same calibre, painted in 1859, was given to the Louvre. As for "Le Remise," it was sold by the artist for 15,000 francs, was in turn in the Lepel- Cointet, Laurent- Richard and Secretan collections, and was finally bought for 76,000 francs by a society of amateurs, and given to the Louvre. It has become so hackneyed by reproductions of all kinds and sizes, that we may be excused from reproducing it here.
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Mention must be made of the "Hallali du Cerf," now in the Besancon museum, which created a very different sort of sensation in the exhibition of 1867, and the Salon of 1869. The general opinion was that the execution is " chimerical," and far above the pretentions of the picture.
In the last years of his life, when his extreme corpulence and growing infirmities made walking and violent exercise extremely difficult for him, Courbet did not give up his favourite subjects. One of the last of his fine hunting pictures was painted in 1873, and shows us one of those landscapes under snow, of which he was so fond, a "Chasseur d'Eau," out after teal and wild duck. It is now in the Buret collection.
