Die Forelle

In 1871 Courbet had backed the Paris Commune and was blamed for toppling the Vendome Column, the great Napoleonic monument in the heart of Paris. He was arrested, fined a ruinous sum, and jailed. This picture of a single trout, hooked and gasping on the riverbank, comes just after, painted back home in the Jura before he fled into permanent exile in Switzerland. On a version of this subject he added, beside his signature, three Latin words, in vinculis faciebat, made in bonds. The heavy, struggling fish, its mouth forced open by the line, is widely read as a disguised self-portrait by a man who was himself cornered and caught. He died across the border in Switzerland in 1877, the huge fine still hanging over him.